


half-light

by skuls



Series: Half-Light Universe [4]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU after Home Again, F/M, Half-light universe, Near Death Experiences, Sort of AU?, angst fluff, scenes of death, sort of kidfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-20 14:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6012078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wonders if this is her Hell, a hospital where nothing of the past has happened and 23 years of her life are seemingly gone. But did she ever really have those years? Is it a Hell when every torture of the past is gone in a few seconds?</p><p>***</p><p>It's not real. It was never real. </p><p>(He knows he should be grateful that it wasn't, for all the suffering they both endured, but he can't shake this feeling. He thinks, it's like she really did die.)</p><p>(And then he hates himself because anything is better than her death. Anything. Even this halfway existence of his.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. part one

**Author's Note:**

> there are some scenes of death, but nothing too graphic? i think? anyway. there's not actually death, if you get my meaning...  
> disclaimer: i do not own these characters or claim to. there are references to and quotes from various episodes and all credit goes to the writers and creators  
> this is weird and probably bad i don't have much experience bye

**half-light**

*******

**or: mulder and scully return from hell**

***

**part one**

It's not a question at this point of how many times this has happened, but a question of “is this the time that will do it”. Mulder could try and romanticize it, but there's nothing there to romanticize. He holds Scully as she bleeds out. And then he's shot in the back.

He thinks she tries to say his name, blood spilling over her lips as they shape the first syllable. He would tell her not to try if he could. He brushes his knuckle against her cheek. He leaves behind a smear of blood. He thinks he feels rain, but it’s not raining in DC.

***

_1993_

They'd lost a hell of a lot more than nine minutes. A flipbook of a sea of broken glass and blood, twisted metal, rain pouring into the gaps left by the broken car, paramedics shouting, “We're losing them!” Scully has life pushed into her, and it makes no sense, because she was dead. And wasn’t she in Washington, DC, not in Bellefluer, Oregon? How could they be inches away from the place where Mulder spray painted an orange X in 1993, where they returned to in 2000, just before Mulder was taken?

When the paramedics shout, “We've got a rhythm!” Scully moves her eyes towards the sound.

_Mulder…_

Because it’s Mulder they're talking about, sprawled limp out on the pavement inches away from her. Except it's not. It's the Mulder she knew on a night in Bellefleur, when he sat on the floor of the hotel room and told her about his sister. Not a day older.

 _Oh, god,_ she thinks briefly. _What's happened_?

***

She'd been dead here, in this place, wherever it is. But she had been dead in the other place, too. She's not sure what's reality, but is there such a thing as a twenty-three year dream? Where you feel pain? Of course, that's not to say she hasn't felt pain here, there's been plenty of that. It's unexplainable, but she supposes that if she was in the afterlife, someone here would remember what she's saying about the life she's lived thus far. _Twenty-three years…_

“It's not 1993,” she says, days later, after she has improved considerably, sitting up in her hospital bed. The sheet is damp where her sweaty hands clutch it. “It's 2016. Agent Mulder and I were chasing a suspect in DC when I was… shot, and…”

(She already knows this isn't the case. She's seen herself. She's exponentially younger, unscarred. But still, she pushes. Tries to hold onto any strings tying her to 2016.)

“Miss Scully…” The nurse meets her eyes. “It's 1993. You and Mr. Mulder were driving back from a crime scene when your car crashed at an estimated time of 9:03 PM. You both arrested on the side of the road, but the paramedics were able to revive you.”

“I… that's impossible, though! It's been 23 years! The car didn't crash, we… we just lost nine minutes.” She falters. _We lost what? Nine minutes!_

The nurse looks worried, and Scully has the sense to shut her mouth. The last thing she needs at the moment is to be moved to the psych ward. “How is Agent Mulder?” she asks, changing the subject quickly. (She's been bursting with the pain of not knowing, but it's still taken her days to ask. _He can't be bad, they would've told me if he was_ …)

“He's doing fine.”

Oh, god. _Fine_. She's used that word as a defense mechanism so often that it's meaning has practically changed to mean the opposite of. Or… maybe it hasn't, and fine means fine, for once. Maybe Mulder really is okay. Mentally, he's probably a hell of a better than her.

She wonders if this _is_ her Hell, a hospital where nothing of the past has happened and 23 years of her life are seemingly gone. But did she ever really have those years? Is it a Hell when every torture of the past is gone in a few seconds?

***

He has fought like hell to get here, argued with the nurses and doctors, insisting that he needed to see his partner, but now that he's here, outside her room, he's not sure if it's the best idea. She hasn't seen him yet, and she's looking down at her hands, folded in her lap. She looks so… different, so much younger. Exactly like the first time she entered his office, when he'd shaken her hand and excused her of being a spy. Of course, if what everyone is saying is true, then she really is that young, and so is he. It's 1993, not 2016.

Mulder turns away from the door, banging his fist against the wall. God, he'd watched her die _again_ in that alley in DC. Except it had been real, and very different from that time with Bowman… The suspect they were pursuing had shot her and kept going. He hadn't been able to reach her. He'd held her as she bled out. And then he'd heard the explosion of a gunshot beside him, felt the pain. And now... here they were.

Mulder has gone through every possible explanation, and hasn't found one that makes sense. It can't be a dream. You don't feel pain in a dream, and he has felt plenty. They were dead, and now they are here. Is this some strange version of Heaven, where an unscarred Scully sits before him?

He grasps for some wild explanation. _Maybe this is some… illusion, maybe the Syndicate has caught up again and they're manipulating us, our thoughts…_

“Excuse me.”

Mulder knows this voice, and he immediately steps back and stares as Bill Scully pushes past him into Scully's hospital room. Something must be wrong, if Scully's brother isn't pursuing Mulder to blame him for Scully.

Or did Bill even recognize him?

Mulder leaves.

***

If this really is 1993, his parents must be alive. He doesn't remember his mother's phone number, much less his father's, and he has to look it up on a phone book. _Phone book,_ he thinks wryly. Ever since the invention of modern day cell phones, he has only ever memorized one number. The only one he ever needed to. He could still rattle off the multiple variations from over the years, still punch every one of them in and listen for her voice, but he knows the effort would be useless.

When Teena Mulder picks up, he bites down on his lip to keep from crying out. She asks questions about his well-being, and he answers them shortly before asking, “Mom, are you okay? Are you feeling sick?”

(He can still remember the disease he hadn't known about that prompted her suicide, after all.)

Her tone is shocked. “Yes, Fox. I'm fine.”

(Nobody has called him that in years, except one time, on a beach, an urn at their feet…)

“And Dad?” Mulder asks. “He's alright, too?”

She sounds more uncomfortable with this answer. “Well, Fox, I haven't spoken with him in quite some time, but I'm sure he's fine…”

Mulder hangs up the phone abruptly. He stares at it for a minute in disbelief before walking away.

***

“Dana? How are you feeling?”

The question startles Scully, and she stares at Bill in surprise. She hasn't talked to him since her mother died (which had not gone very well, of course). He doesn't look any aged, either. Whatever illusion that is making her think it is 1993 is very effective.

“Bill?” she asks.

“They called Mom and Dad when they brought you in. I was the closest, so I drove up to check on you.” (Immediately, Scully notices the absence of a ring on her brother's finger. Of course, he and Tara were barely dating at this point…)

“Bill?” she asks again. Her voice sounds like it's coming from down a tunnel. She can't see a light at the end. “How's… how's Melissa?” She can barely even get the sentence out, voice shaking.

Bill is taken aback by the question. “Melissa? She was fine the last time I talked to her, why do you ask?”

 _Oh, God._ Scully reaches absently for the necklace, the cross she still wears around her neck. (At least that hasn't changed. She's tried to feel Mulder in the small piece of metal, but he's not there. Because he was never there in the first place.) “And Mom and Dad?” she asks in a choked voice.

Now Bill definitely looks surprised. “They're fine, too. Dana, are you okay?”

Scully reaches up to touch her face. Her fingers come away wet. “I'm fine,” she lies.

***

Later, after Bill is gone, she looks for scars. Where she was shot in the abdomen. Any signs of her pregnancy with William. Marks left from her cancer. Anything to indicate that anything from the past 23 years happened.

There's nothing there. She is unmarred, unmarked. Smooth skin, smudged soul. She grips the counter too hard and leaves fingerprints across the white porcelain.

She asks her doctor about her infertility. The doctor looks surprised by the question. “I’m not sure where you got that idea from,” she tells her, “but your ability to have children is perfectly intact, Dana.”

_Emily? William?_

She's not sure how it's possible, and yet. And yet here she is.

***

Mulder doesn't allow himself to go see her. He asks the doctor about her, of course, and she tells him Scully is fine. (Which doesn’t exactly reassure him.)

He tries to comprehend something, anything about what has happened. _Is Samantha alive? Was I wrong about the conspiracy? Is any of it real? If I keep digging, will they come after me - or Scully - again?_

There's no explanation, and yet he thinks he's found one. _It was a hallucination of some sort,_ he tells himself. _A worst case scenario that you created for yourself. You don't know anything about Dana Scully. You made it all up._

_You have another chance to figure out what happened to Samantha. She may not be dead. All of it… you get another chance._

He wonders if it's worth it.

***

She's already convinced herself that none of it happened. The Mulder she knew would jokingly scold her for lack of an open mind, but the Mulder she knew does not exist. _It wasn't real._

_God, did his sister even disappear? Or was that just my explanation of why someone would throw their career away on UFOs?_

She doesn't even know why her mind would come up with _you're going to fall in love with your new partner and follow him to the ends of the Earth - no matter the personal consequences to yourself_ as a hallucination when she arrested. Or that the depths of her mind could be so creative. She's never exactly been a creative person. But she knows that none of it was real. It can't be real.

God, how is she even supposed to go back to her normal life now? She's changed so much, moved so far back from the life she's been thrust into. She wasn't the same person who walked into Spooky Mulder's basement hideout. She’d let her life become a rambling of chasing things that don't exist, and running after a man she doesn't know. And what is she supposed to do now? Go back to work with him and pretend she isn't in love with her mind's reflection of him? Solve cases like she hasn't convinced herself in some hallucination that monsters exist?

Because of course they don't, do they? Of course it was never real, of course. And this is her chance to put it all behind her.

***

He goes to see her.

Mulder had almost convinced himself that it was some sort of shared experience, and this is another chance for him _and_ Scully, and they can work through their demons together. But her polite (but detached) smile as he steps into the hospital room is plenty indication he was wrong. She doesn't know him. And worst, he doesn't know her.

(But his breath still catches at the sight of her in a hospital bed.)

“Agent Mulder,” she says (dully, politely, and Mulder pushes the echoes of _Mulder_ or _Fox_ or anything besides the courteous address to the back of his mind). “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” he lies (it’s only fair, she's done it to him enough). “How about you?”

She won't meet his eyes. “Pretty good, considering the circumstances.

Mulder has to stop himself from latching onto her, because he can still feel her blood against his skin, and it’s making his skin crawl, and he has to remind himself, _it didn't happen, it wasn't real_. “Listen,” he says. “I'm really sorry about crashing the car like that...”

She looks up in surprise, eyes wide. “It's not your fault,” she says. “The road was slick. It was raining.”

“Still,” he says. “You could have died, Scully.” He tries to hide his shaking hands.

“But I didn't, “ she says. “I'm still here, Mulder.”

He'd felt the life drain out of her, so her words don't have much effect. _It's not her. It's not her_.

***

_It's not him. It's not him._

He's familiar and painful and he won't meet her eyes. She tries again. “It's not your fault, Mulder,” she says. Her Mulder would need reassuring, would blame himself, would push her away... “... but I do want you to know that I am leaving the FBI.”

So she'll push away for him, unclench her hands from the side of the swimming pool and sink into deep water. Mulder was her tie to land, but somehow, the water seems safer.

Mulder looks up immediately at this. His eyes widen slightly, and something like relief spreads over his face. “You are?”

She nods. For a moment, she feels very small. “I… my parents never approved, especially after this… “ This is a lie. She keeps meaning to call them, but she hasn't. (They didn't approve, but they never told her to leave, not even after Tooms, after Duane Barry, after the cancer… her father may have, she wouldn't know, but her mother had always been unwavering in support…) “... and I think I want to go into medicine now.”

She needs this lie. She is cutting off her ties to this illusion, and this lie is her lifeline.

(A small part of her hopes that Mulder will sever it.)

Mulder blinks. “Well… that's good. I wish you luck.”

“Thank you,” she says. “You, too. I hope you find the truth.” She flinches a little at the familiar phrase she couldn't stop from slipping out, but he says nothing to this.

They exchange a few more pleasantries as he looks at the floor and she looks at her hands. Scully asks about the case, and Mulder says he's going to leave it up to local authorities. “They really didn't want us here, anyway,” he says, and Scully knows this is not her Mulder, because he would never leave in the middle of a case like this.

_It's not him. It's not him._

***

If anything, this is a confirmation that this is not his Scully. She only ever tried to leave twice. The first time, he'd tried to kiss her in a hallway and followed her to Antarctica to save her. The second time, she'd left their house, moved back to DC, became a doctor, like he'd told her to then. But one call from Skinner, and she'd been back, following him all over again. Both times she'd come back. She always came back, no matter how much he'd tried to save her. So this can't be his Scully, because it was so easy for her to leave.

He'll miss her, even if he can't allow himself to. It's for the best. This way, she won't be hurt anymore. He can go down the rabbit hole again, if that's what it takes for Samantha, but he won't take her. Not this time. He won't be responsible for her pain again.

***

They leave the hospital, and get on a plane home. If there were ever any doubts in Mulder's mind about the authenticity of that hospital, of the idea that the conspirators were inside their heads, that it was all an illusion, it's all gone at this point. The Syndicate wouldn't have let them leave. Besides, he hasn't smelled cigarette smoke, and that bastard seemed to turn up at every turn in the other place.

He looks in on Billy Miles and Peggy O’Dell before they leave. No change. Of course not. _Billy Miles never became a cop, was never abducted or returned dead, never came back to life, never tried to kill Scully or my son…_

His son doesn't exist, and every part of Mulder that isn't teeming with selfish longing is relieved.

He is grateful that he's been seated far behind Scully on the plane. As long as he doesn't look up, he can pretend that everything is normal, he's stuck back in his old house and she may be gone but it's not the end of the world.

_It's not real. It was never real._

(He knows he should be grateful that it wasn't, for all the suffering they both endured, but he can't shake this feeling. He thinks, _it's like she really did die_.)

(And then he hates himself because anything is better than her death. Anything. Even this halfway existence of his.)

 _Who's to say she didn't really die, and this elaborate fantasy is my coping mechanism_ , he thinks idly, darkly.

He turns his mind to Samantha. How he will find out what happened to her this time. Even if she is dead, he can't take the thought of not knowing for sure. He'd never accepted anything less before this.

He can almost hear Scully's voice scolding him, telling him he's gone down this path one too many times, he's on dangerous ground, he's not going to get her back.

 _Scully’s not here_ , Mulder thinks furiously. _Not my Scully, anyway_.

He'd never really liked it when she’d done that anyway.

(Which was a lie. He'd loved every minute he'd spent with her regardless.)

***

Her parents meet her at the airport and Scully has to hold everything in her back from running up to them and latching on like a little girl. She hasn't seen her father in so many years. She named her son after him, and she only remembered what he looked like from pictures.

They call her “Dana” and it takes some getting used to. 23 years of constant “Scully”s: “Dr. Scully”, “Agent Scully”, a shouted “Scully!” in woods or corn fields, a whispered “Scully…” when she was hurt or dying… Her father calls her “Starbuck”, and she digs her nails into the skin of her palm to keep from sobbing. She almost tells him that she named both her dogs after _Moby-Dick_ characters, and has to remind herself that they never existed, either.

It's been years since she's seen her apartment, it's been a couple of weeks. She finds herself checking to see where the window was repaired after Duane Barry, checking for Pfaster’s bloodstains on the floor, checking for signs of William ever having lived here. (She would've thought getting over the son she'd never had would be easiest, she had already lost him once, and thousands, it seemed, of times before that, but it was still so hard, another chance or not.)

She calls Melissa and jams a hand in her mouth to keep from crying out when she hears the voice over the phone for the first time since Emily. She cries as soon as she hangs up. Somehow, she's gotten three members of her family back. She'd been getting used to the fact that she'd never see her mother again.

She goes to the FBI to drop off her letter of resignation. She has to hold in a gasp when she sees Pendrell alive ( _how many people, how many people am I going to have to get used to seeing alive_ ). She sees Blevins and holds in a _he's with the conspiracy, you can't trust him_ because there is no conspiracy, of course. She nearly runs into Skinner, and sees he doesn't have much recognition for her. Of course, they hadn't started pissing him off until later in their X Files career. Still, it’s hard not to talk to the man who their relationship had been almost paternal with, at the end. He'd saved them multiple times, and he looks at her now without much recognition before moving on.

She almost goes down into the basement out of habit. Even 23 years later, it's still habit. (Step into the elevator, push the “B” button. Go into an office with no desk for her, without her name on the door, and listen to ramblings about monsters. Even when she'd returned, it hadn't really been her office, still. Maybe everyone, even Mulder, had been waiting for her chance to walk away.)

But she stops as soon as her foot hits the floor outside the elevator, and she turns, telling herself, _it wasn't real, it wasn't real_. She wipes away hot tears in the elevator, and tries to expunge the echoes of his voice from her head.

***

He wonders if they'll send another spy. If they do, he hopes he can give himself the courtesy of not falling in love with this one.

He wonders if he'll go to old cases, except without Scully to back him up. (He'll probably die a few cases in, without the skeptical voice of reason to shoot the bad guys.) Does he have to worry about liver eating mutants and serial killers now? (Is it his courtesy to remember when all these things happen and call up with a tip? Is he some sick kind of prophet, doomed to save a population from all things that go bump in the night? Should he buy a calendar to map out his and Scully’s time investigating, so he'll remember when to start warning people?) Or did he make it all up? If so, how did he get so goddamn creative? He'd inserted people of the past into his fantasy, twisted them to be darker. Boggs, Roche, Barnett. Phoebe. Fowley. That man who had been around a lot as a kid, always smoking. Funny, his brain had manipulated him into the devil. Was he still trying to comprehend the things that had happened to him, his past traumas? How did that turn into a 23 year fantasy on the brink of death?

_If I was going to make up 23 years for myself, the least I could've done is make them happy._

He pulls a file out of the cabinet for the first time since returning. One on near death experiences. There's the generic, of course. Light, dead relatives, discussion with God, compulsive need to do better. And then there's the negative experiences. A trip to Hell, also inspiring people to do better.

Mulder notes some near the back. People who detail an entire other reality, where they experienced pure bliss or pure torture.

It's the best explanation of what happened to him that he can think of. Losing his family, his son, Scully, himself, his life being cast into a spiral of tragedy… he was in Hell. And now he's back.

***

Scully has nightmares.

Which isn't abnormal, not for her, but now she's having nightmares about a nightmare. She has to remind herself _Tooms isn't real Pfaster isn't real Modell isn't real Schnauz isn't real Mulder's okay Mulder's not real there's no such thing as aliens._

_Or is there? Was that some sick prophecy? Is this my future? It can't be, because I left the FBI._

She has nightmares about a son and daughter that never existed. She has nightmares of the shadow of her former partner, a conjuring of her own she fell in love with.

She has to remind herself how to use 90s technology. _This is ridiculous_ , she tells herself. _That wasn't real, either. You need to forget it._

She goes to Our Ladies Of Sorrow one morning out of habit, and walks in like she belongs there. Which she doesn't. When she is asked about it, she tells them she is there to apply for a job.

Just as well. At least there can be some familiarity in her life.

She misses him at unusual moments. She’d made herself get used to not seeing him before, but she’d always known they could fix it if they wanted. Now they can’t. So she misses him. When she wakes up, when she goes to sleep. When she eats dinner by herself. When she sits and makes herself memorize old phone numbers, even though she still remembers his number. She sees spaces in her apartment, but she only sees him in them, the way she had when he’d been gone before. It hadn’t happened after she’d left, because she had found a space where he hadn’t been. She feels hollow and she can’t explain it.

They were the definition of a tragic love story, cast against the world, thrown together into a wild sea of darkness that they couldn't claw their way out of. Scully had wondered before if there was fate involved, or if they'd beaten the odds, gone against what was written in the stars. Either way, their story is being rewritten, and Scully never wanted it to end this way.

***

The office is unfamiliar without Scully lurking around it, and Mulder finds himself missing her at abnormal moments. No one to roll their eyes at his theories, no one to rein him in, keep him from going too far, prove half of his theories, in the end.

No one to spy on him, either.

He doesn't take any cases for a while. He looks over his sister's files. He searches for CGB Spender, Alex Krycek, Deep Throat, Marita Covarrubias. He tapes an X to his window, just to see if anything happens. He goes to nearby places where they had found something before. Nothing visible. No leads, no hints of the truth.

For the first time in years, Mulder wonders if there is no truth out there. If his sister really was taken by a serial killer, like Roche had made him believe. It made so much sense before, in his dream or whatever, but now, here in his apparent real life, he's not sure he wants to give another 23 years to this. He’d had a long time to make peace with Samantha’s death before diving headfirst back into the conspiracy. And when he had, it had been about her, but it had been about Scully, too. And William, and his own suffering over this, and saving the world, as Scully had put it, on the porch of the house they'd bought together, the house she had left. None of that existed here. He was just Fox Mulder, with plenty of life left to live, and plenty of time to make up for lost years.

The only thing was, he didn't quite know what he'd be making up for.

***

Scully goes to Skyland Mountain.

She's traced half of her false life's greatest tragedies to an abductee who forced her into a trunk, and drove her hours to a mountain where he left the aliens take her, apparently. Or the military. Had they ever figured out exactly who it was? It hadn't mattered. What followed was a coma, cancer, Emily, William. Her alien DNA. Melissa. She can’t stop wondering what would have happened if Mulder had gotten there in time. He’d told her years later how close he had come, and he hadn’t been able to look at her when he'd said it. How would their life have been twisted in a different direction? Would they have been happy sooner? Or would they have come together at all? Does she owe every happiness in her false life to Duane Barry?

It’s not an explainable urge, but she knows she has to go, so she drives and finally gets to see what it looks like from the outside.

***

Mulder goes to Skyland Mountain.

It's for several reasons, the most plausible being that there were two abductions there, in his dream. But also because he keeps dreaming of when she was taken. _Mulder! I need your help!_ The fact that he came so close to being able to save her. If he hadn't lingered at the car so long, if the tram hadn't been stalled, if he'd let Duane Barry die in that office…

_I could've saved her._

It was more than that. The abduction led to her cancer, her children, her alien DNA… if he'd gotten there sooner, he could've gotten Barry away from her, left before the ship came. He could've held her as she cried into his shirt, the way she had after Pfaster. He could've saved them years of pain.

He has to remind himself that it was just a dream, so he goes to Skyland Mountain. But he finds her at the top.

Her car is parked where Barry's was, and she stands facing away from him, moonlight bouncing off of the vibrancy of her hair, hands balled into fists at her side. For a moment, everything in him is sheer panic, and he screams her name.

Scully turns to look at him, and her face white. “Mulder?”

“What are you doing here?” he calls. It's the same thing he asked her in a warehouse, weeks after they buried her daughter, before she pressed a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. But that hadn't been real, either.

_Is this real?_

Her hands are shaking, and he sees her shove them in her pockets. Hiding from him again. This is all too familiar. “I had to see,” she says. “I had to…”

They close the distance between them. Mulder reaches out and pulls her against him, resting his head against the top of hers. Her hair carries the same smell. Somehow, they still fit together, his chin on top of her head. Somehow, it's like nothing has changed.

“Mulder…” she says into his shirt. She is holding him just as tightly, small hands knotted into the back of his shirt.

“You were dead, Scully.” His voice shakes. “I watched you die again. Again.”

Her voice is muffled, but firm. “That wasn't real.”

“The suspect,” he says. “You cornered him in an alley. You… you kept approaching suspects alone. You did it in Oregon.”

“The lizard man.”

“Why did you do that,” he says into her hair. “He shot you, Scully. I couldn't get there in time. He shot you and he ran.”

“Mulder…”

He should stop but he can't. “The blood was everywhere, Scully. I couldn't stop it. I called 911, but they wouldn't have been able to get there in time. I watched you die, Scully, and then I followed you.”

“Mulder,” she says again, and she sounds on the verge of tears. He guesses he really will get the chance to hold her on Skyland Mountain while she cries. “That _wasn't real_.”

“William,” he says.

She pulls away to look up at him. Her eyes are the same, hurt and furious. “Excuse me?”

“Our son. William. Do you remember?”

Her voice is breathless. “Do you?”

***

They'd left the mountain. Too many painful memories for either of them to stay. Mulder had driven ahead of her, and he'd stopped checking to make sure she was still there after about an hour of driving. But when he'd gotten to his apartment, she'd been behind him. He hadn't been sure if she would come, but she had, unfailing. As always.

Now they sit on his couch, the same couch where they'd sat so many times before. The fish tank casts an eerie blue light over everything. He doesn't even remember the fish’s names, or if they'd had names. But he remembers that Scully fed them when he was gone.

They recap twenty-three years in the dark, and Mulder holds himself back from reaching out and grabbing her hand. Scully breathes unevenly as she talks. She sounds too young in the dark.

“I thought I’d made it all up,” she says, voice shaking.

“That's what I'd thought, but I don't think so, Scully,” he says. “I've been reading about near death experiences. There are reported negative near death experiences.”

“Mulder…”

“What if we…” He almost can't get the words out. He reaches for her hand, and stops himself again, fingers spread out on the fabric. “What if we shared a negative near death experience because we arrested at the same time? What if we were in Hell?”

There's a pause. She doesn't answer.

Mulder reaches for her hand again, and actually takes it this time, fingers sliding together naturally. “Everything we went through, Scully. All of it. That was Hell. It makes sense, doesn't it?”

“Bruckman,” she says.

“What?”

“Bruckman,” she says again. “The psychic. He told me I wouldn't die. Fellig, when I was shot. He told me not to look at Death. Nobody dies in Hell. We died, and here we are.”

Mulder closes his eyes. “I did.”

Her hand goes limp in his. “But you came back,” she whispers, terrified. “We always came back.”

Mulder can see her shadowy figure in the blue light from the fishtank. Her head is bowed, hair hiding her face. She is shaking. She speaks again. “Mulder, when I was in my coma…”

It's his turn to freeze with unearthed terror.

“I remember things that were undoubtedly part of that… reality. My father spoke to me, and my father is still alive here. But I remember something else about that time. I remember standing on a road in Oregon, in the rain, next to a car crash… briefly, but I remember. “

He has a sudden flash of memory. “I was there, “ he says. “When I… died. I remember, too.”

Scully rests her head against his shoulder. He doesn't remember them getting this close. “I'm not sure we'll ever really know what happened,” she says into the fabric of his shirt. “But. If we remember the same things…”

“Hell or not, it doesn't matter, I guess,” Mulder says. “I still fell in love with you.”

Scully squeezes his hand, and he remembers the lizard man case again. A hotel room, with animal heads on the walls and a case file strewn across the bed. _Yeah, this is how I like my Mulder,_ she'd said, wearing one of his shirts to sleep in. He hadn't responded. Maybe he should have.

“This is another chance,” she says. She's moved closer somehow, pressed against him. “Maybe things will turn out differently this time. Better.”

There is a lot unspoken in this proposition, and for a brief second, Mulder allows himself to imagine it. (He wonders if it's possible to get back a child that never existed. If this isn't just another chance for them, but for William, too, somehow.)

“Scully…” He reaches up, absently, to touch her hair, and moves his hand down immediately. “There's still Samantha. I still don't… really know what happened to her. She could still be alive… I can't stop looking, I can't give up on her.”

He'd been bracing himself for her usual chiding, her irritation at him for throwing herself back into it. _You can't save her, Mulder._ But when she pulls back to look at him, he sees none of that reflected in her eyes. (Somehow, they're still the brightest things in the room, even in the dusky effect.)

“Mulder,” she says. He still has a hold of her left hand. She reaches with her right and takes his free one. “I told you once that I wouldn't change a day.” She smiles slightly in the half-light, and there is hope in that smile. _Maybe there's hope._ “Did you not believe me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> am i the type of person who writes long a/n? hell yes.
> 
> so basically i had too much time on my hands over christmas and i had this idea that the entire show takes place in hell because of all the ridiculous angst and what if mulder and scully came back and thought the other didn’t remember any of it and thought they weren’t the same person. and then it turned into this. joy! so the idea is that instead of losing 9 minutes in the pilot, the car actually crashed, and mulder and scully went to hell together and fell in love and died somewhere around revival era where they were returned to 1993 because the only real parts were each other. confusing? yeah i know. i was adamant about not establishing how much was real outside of themselves. 
> 
> the near death experiences mulder researches are partially taken from my religion class. i've never heard of a sequence elaborate as 23 years worth of hell, negative or not, though. please research on your own if you need this information to study, as i didn’t include much ACTUAL FACT and put much of my own spin on it. 
> 
> half of this was written pre-revival and half mid-revival, if you can tell. i'm hoping i didn't completely screw up these characters.
> 
> if you didn't catch the line i got the title from, it's ‘she smiles slightly in the half-light’ ie, the light of the fish tank. i would say there's symbolic meaning, because this new development is half great, half terrible because they've lost 23 years and gained a shitload of ptsd, but what do i know.
> 
> *passively aggressively applies band-aid to the show and dabs at blood leaking out* look mom! i fixed it!


	2. part two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If he’d had to say what he thought it would have been like, if he had thought about it when Scully had told him she was going to try and return to the unit, in the early hours of the day, in the full light of his living room on the couch, he would’ve guessed the way it was the first time around. When solving cases with a partner was still new, and she’d denied all his explanations without another word on the subject. But it’s closer to the time they had spent after their return in 2016. There is a certain feeling of history and deja vu in the familiar path of solving X Files with Dana Scully. They fall into their rhythm in no time. Mulder had thought it would be more difficult, with the pieces of the past that they had lost, but their memories are still there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did continue. i continued because 1. i am weak, 2. lots of people asked for it (thanks guys!), and 3. i’m in love with angsty fluff msr. a lot of this is weird and my attempts at being coy and ambiguous, which don’t go over as planned and turn out shitty. i never claimed to be a good writer. nevertheless, i continued, and there will be a part 3, soon hopefully.  
> i know it’s a little unrealistic to have scully go back to the fbi like this, but look. it’s also unrealistic to bring mulder back after so many years as the fbi’s most wanted. they never explained that either. so let me have my unrealisticness because txf guys have had plenty of their own.  
> my x files in here are shitty. you may poke fun, but one of them is slightly inspired by true events. i didn't go into detail anyway, so.  
> my struggle ii isn't canon in this universe. what the hell, neither is babylon. i was going to have einstein and miller make a small meaningless appearance, but i can do without that, and if i can make it so achy breaky heart never happened, i will. so this universe takes place sometime after home again, because if it takes place after my struggle ii i'd have to determine the outcome of the apocalypse and i'm lazy and i'm pretty sure it would contradict the rest of this.  
> this runs on a s1-4 timeline, and the ending is right around what would normally be "gethsemane" timeline.  
> to everyone who asked me to continue, a.) tysm, and b.) i'm sorry. i doubt this is what you wanted. i tried to make m&s cuddle as much as possible.  
> warning for violence. there's some delving into the duane barry storyline, but i tried to keep everything non-graphic because i hate graphic stuff. (yeah not sure why i picked txf to watch but mulder and scully help. as i hope they help in this one.)  
> this is weird. i'm sorry. anyone is welcome to imagine that this ended at pt 1 if you don't like where i went with this. if anyone still wants to read, scroll on!

******part two**

She wakes up with his head against her shoulder. They’d fallen asleep on his couch last night. 

Scully is still trying to process the events that had transpired. Drive to Skyland Mountain, find Mulder. Follow Mulder home. Hold his hand on a couch and tell him you’ll follow him further. No problem. 

(She’s still not sure how much she believes him on the issue of Hell, but that’s a conversation for later. After all, she doesn’t see what else it could be, if they both remember.) 

His breath is hot against her shirt. She kisses him on the forehead and closes her eyes.

***

Somehow, she manages to convince them to take her back. “I made a mistake,” she says. “I was in shock. I shouldn’t have resigned so hastily.”

They agree, she supposes, because they want her to spy on Mulder. She has no plans to, of course.

She goes to the basement and finds another nameplate on the door.  _ Agent Dana Scully. _ This is the most unfamiliar sight of all, because she wasn’t ever expecting to see that. Not in any universe. 

When she enters the office, she has decided not to mention it. But Mulder immediately looks up from his work, glasses askew on his face, and gives her an apologetic smile. “There really isn't room for two desks in here,” he says. “I'm sorry.”

Scully involuntarily shakes her head. “No, it's… fine. Really.” She sits in her usual spot by his desk. The poster still hangs on the wall. The earliest incarnation - they'd had four or five over the years.

“We've got a new case,” he says, drumming his fingers against the desktop.

Scully smiles slightly. “Liver eating mutant?”

“No, actually. Murder of a young couple, no clear cause of death. They lived out in the middle of nowhere, and hadn't been seen for weeks. One of their parents found them when she drove out to see them.”

“And how is this an X File?”

Mulder smirks. “The house is said to be haunted.”

Scully shakes her head immediately. “Mulder, that's ridiculous!”

“What do you mean, ridiculous? You've seen ghosts before!” he argues.

“That was Hell. It doesn't count.”

There's an uncomfortable silence. For a second, Scully thinks she's said something wrong.

Mulder shrugs. “Well, it's better than Tooms, at least. Ghosts can't hurt you.”

“Then what's your explanation for the victims?”

“Oh, yeah. I didn't think this through.”

“Besides, remember that Christmas we spent in the haunted house?”

“Don't remind me, Scully.”

Scully taps the file on Mulder's desk. “We leaving tomorrow morning?”

“Nine o’clock flight up to Massachusetts.”

***

Mulder looks for the monsters of their past, or future, or whatever the appropriate term is. There's nothing there to be found. Tooms doesn't show, doesn't attack Scully in her apartment. They work two cases in the time he spends waiting.

Mulder convinces Scully to go and search for the Jersey Devil. They find nothing, and she chastises him for it, but there is humor underlying. 

He had laughed at the idea of buying calendars and marking dates, but now it doesn’t seem funny, so he buys a calendar and marks the cases, waits for calls. They don’t come. 

If he’d had to say what he thought it would have been like, if he had thought about it when Scully had told him she was going to try and return to the unit, in the early hours of the day, in the full light of his living room on the couch, he would’ve guessed the way it was the first time around. When solving cases with a partner was still new, and she’d denied all his explanations without another word on the subject. But it’s closer to the time they had spent after their return in 2016. There is a certain feeling of history and deja vu in the familiar path of solving X Files with Dana Scully. They fall into their rhythm in no time. Mulder had thought it would be more difficult, with the pieces of the past that they had lost, but their memories are still there. 

***

She calls him the night her father died in the other place, right after her parents leave. She’d stepped into her living room, and had seen the tree, the couch where she’d slept, and the chair her father had been sitting in, and Scully had known she wouldn’t be able to make it alone. So she calls Mulder and he says he can be over in a few minutes. There is none of the stinted awkwardness that there would’ve been had she called him the first time around. It’s somewhat comforting to know that there are few barriers between them, less lines they’re unable to cross.

He shows up in a few minutes flat, as promised. “Thank you,” she says, stepping aside to let him in. “It’s just that I…” 

“I know. I understand, Scully.” He must’ve understood. He’d come to her after his father died. 

They sit side by side on her couch, and in the darkness, she finally tells him what she’d been afraid to tell him years before. “I saw him,” she says. Her hands are cold. She slides them into the spaces between the couch cushions. “Right before Mom called to tell me. I saw him sitting right there, in the chair. I think he was trying to tell me something, but I looked away and he was gone.” It was the first time that had happened to her, but it wouldn’t be the last. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you.” 

Mulder doesn’t say anything, but he moves his hand so that it rests aginst her wrist.

They watch the clock in the corner in silence. When it hits 1:47, Scully turns her head against his shoulder and whispers  _ please could you get the phone if it rings I can’t do it.  _ He doesn’t argue this point, only agrees in a low voice.  _ It’s only fair,  _ she thinks numbly.  _ After all, I autopsied his mother. _

The phone doesn’t ring. They fall asleep on her couch at 2:45. 

***

_ 1994 _

Mulder meets Scully’s father for the first time and Maggie for the second time by accident. He comes over to work on a case file just as they are leaving. Scully answers the door, muttering, “Hi,” in a low voice. She shoots a nervous glance over her shoulder just as Maggie steps into the entranceway.

It’s a bit of a shock for Mulder, as he watched Maggie Scully say her last words, addressing the two of them. ( _ My son is named William, too. _ ) He holds back from greeting her with familiarity as she greets him politely.

“Mom, this is my partner, Fox Mulder,” Scully says, stepping aside so he can enter. 

Maggie smiles and shakes his hand. “It’s nice to meet you. Dana’s told us a lot about you.”

“Likewise,” Mulder replies. He’s nervous, and he hopes she can’t tell. He tries not to think about the fact that she’d once been in an urn at his feet.

Scully looks at the ground and pokes the rug with her shoe sheepishly. The gesture reminds Mulder of a teenager introducing their date to their parents, and the thought makes him grin.  

Her father enters, and Scully repeats the same process, but her voice is visibly shaking. Mulder wonders if they notice. Bill Scully’s voice makes Mulder’s hands sweat, even though he knows it’s ridiculous, and he can’t help but be a little relieved when they leave. 

There are ghosts lurking everywhere that he knows they may never exorcise. He hasn’t spoken to either of his parents in months, maybe because the thought of them being alive is jarring and it’s easier to forget if they maintain their distant relationship. But there is something different in meeting Scully’s father. He’d never met the man in the other place.

Scully makes a face at him as soon as they’re alone. He grins again, and hands her a pen. “You ready?”

***

It’s more of a gradual thing, their relationship. The way it was before. They’d never talked about their relationship, had never officially begun a relationship, and the closest Mulder had ever come to a declaration of his undying love was the first “I love you” on his hospital bed. It had been another unspoken thing between them. An evolution that didn’t need an explanation. 

This is how it is with their relationship again. They fall asleep on Scully’s bed on a night they spend working. They go home together after work. It doesn’t require a discussion or a momentous occasion. It just… happens.

The circumstances of the other place aligning with real time don’t exactly help anything. Mulder sleeps at Scully’s place for weeks around the time of the Willis and Barnett incidents. A precaution, but a wise one. Nothing happens.

***

Scully almost runs into him one day as she’s leaving. A man she hasn’t seen since he died on a bridge, twenty-three years ago. Although, technically, it hasn’t happened yet.

He mutters an apology and pushes past her, seemingly in a hurry. Scully can’t stop herself from calling out, “Deep Throat!”

He turns to look at her, and their eyes meet. She swallows.  _ Trust no one.  _ His last warning had been one they’d abided by. She steps closer, and then stops when she sees annoyance and confusion reflected on his face. 

“Can I help you?”

“You don’t… know me?” she asks, already regretting this, feeling silly.  _ Every lead. I need to follow every lead, for Mulder.  _ “Dana Scully?”

He turns and starts to leave.

“My partner’s Fox Mulder!” she shouts after him.

He doesn’t respond to this, either. Scully watches him in confusion. She isn’t surprised he didn’t respond, as his entire relationship with Mulder had been one of the lies of the other place, but still, if that never existed, then why does Deep Throat himself exist?

***

 “Want to go on a road trip?”

She pushes her glasses up her nose, and grins up at him. “Let me guess. A nice trip to the forest?”

Mulder doesn’t return the smile. He swallows roughly, as if he doesn’t expect her to respond well. “No, actually,” he says. “I wanted to go to that… army base. The one where we found Samantha’s handprints in the other place.”

_ Oh.  _ Scully reaches out and touches his arm. “Of course I’ll come,” she assures him. 

So they go. It doesn’t qualify as a case, so they drive instead of flying. Scully takes the first driving shift. Mulder makes some joke about her feet not being able to reach the pedals, and she throws a pen at him and tells him to get some sleep. 

It’s a good thing Mulder’s broken into government facilities hundreds of times before, because Scully honestly doesn’t remember how. He teases her when she asks him to help her climb the fence and she rolls her eyes, and she wonders how much time they have of this normality before it all goes to hell.

They get to the corner where they found the handprints before, and it is blank. No marks in the cement. No sign of Samantha, or Jeffrey Spender, having been here. Scully recognizes it, even years later (or earlier, take your pick), but Mulder insists on checking every corner, just to be sure. They find nothing else, nothing to indicate his sister was ever here, and Mulder slumps against a tree with defeat.

Scully places a hand on his shoulder. “This is a good thing,” she tells him with comfort she doesn’t believe. “This means things didn’t go like they did in the other place. Your sister could still be alive.”

He nods, but doesn’t answer. He drives halfway home before stopping, unblinkingly staring ahead at the road. 

***

The date grows closer and Mulder grows more cautious. When he has a nightmare about Scully, in a coma on a hospital bed, he refuses to leave her side for days after. 

Scully eventually notices on the day of, when he moves to follow her out of the office. She sees the date on the calendar, and her hands grow clammy at the sight. “Mulder,” she says, trying to iron any signs of fear or stress from her voice. “I'm  _ fine _ .”

He starts slightly. “What?”

“This is the day,” she says, suddenly realizing why he'd been so clingy recently. “I know you know. But it's fine. Duane Barry is not going to come for me.”

“Scully…” he starts.

“Mulder, listen,” she says.  _ It wasn't real.  _ “I need some time, okay? I'm headed home.”

“Scully,” he says again.

“I'll call you if I need you, okay?” She leaves quickly so she can pretend she doesn't hear shattering glass and her own gasps in the back of her mind.

***

Mulder turns the T.V. on as soon as he gets home to try and take his mind of Scully. He tells himself he is being irrational, until he sees the news report. A Dr. Hakkie, found murdered on the side of the road after being taken hostage by an escaped mental patient.

Mulder's blood freezes in his veins, and he's out the door before he can remember standing.

***

He's too late. Barry's already broken in and taken her. There's no phone call, no voicemail of Scully shouting for help, but all the other evidence is there. The shattered window. Blood smeared on her glass table.

Mrs. Scully shows up, and Mulder reassures her that he will find Scully before leaving in a hurry. He's already mapping out the route he needs to take in his mind.

_ Skyland Mountain. I can make it. I can save her before… before… _

He can't even let himself think about what will happen. 

_ Why did they even take her? We haven't found anything! I'm no where close to where I was in the other place. Why would they take her? _

***

He catches up to them on the Blue Ridge Parkway, stops him on the side of the road. He approaches the car, passing the trunk. He knows she's there, wants desperately to let her out, but he knows that Barry has a gun. He remembers the state trooper that had been killed the last time. If he ends up like that, there's no hope for her. 

He approaches the window, immediately aiming his gun. Barry starts to talk. “Shut up!” Mulder shouts. “Shut the fuck up! Why'd you take her?”

He doesn't answer. There is blood on the steering wheel. Her blood. “Why'd you take her?” he shouts again. 

There's a bump from the back of the car and a garbled yell. It's muffled, but he can make out his name. It sounds like a warning.  _ Mulder, no! _

Barry raises a gun.

Mulder pulls the trigger.

Barry slumps back on the seat, gun clattering to the floor. Scully is still calling his name through the gag, her voice a nervous question. Mulder reaches over Barry's body, and pops the trunk.

When he opens it, Scully relaxes with relief. She moves herself upright. “Are you okay?” he asks immediately, pulling the gag from her mouth. 

She nods, moving to bury her face against his shoulder. “Mulder, I thought he was going to kill you. I thought…”

He pulls her against him, loosening the ropes around her wrists. She wraps her arms around his neck. Mulder blinks back tears and rests his face against her hair.

***

He holds her hand under the table as they give their statements. If anyone notices, they either don’t comment, or don’t care. Scully’s voice is a monotone as she recounts how Barry took her. She says that he didn't include his motive. Witnesses at the hospital says he was taking the doctor to a place where he was supposedly abducted (like it had been at the other place, but how, things are supposed to be different here), but his motives on taking Scully are unclear.

They leave together. Mulder climbs into the driver's seat, but doesn't start the car. She is silent beside him, staring straight ahead.

“Scully?” he asks gently.

She absently climbs over the console, settling into his lap. He pulls her against him, kissing her jaw gently.

***

“You should go,” he says one night when they are in bed, and her arm is slung over him. 

“We're not doing this again, Mulder,” she says immediately. 

It somehow makes it easier if he doesn’t look at her. “This has happened too many times, Scully. You can't stay.”

“I can't go, either. I can't leave you again, Mulder.”

“If you don't go, it may not be our decision to make.”

Scully is silent for a second. She touches him on the shoulder. “Mulder, we still don't know why Duane Barry took me.”

He looks away from her wrists, which are still bruised, and winces. 

“But it had nothing to do with you. You never saw him before then.”

“We don't know that, Scully. I was looking for Samantha, and then he takes you, on the same day he took you in the other place. That can't be a coincidence. And I won't let it happen again.”

“Mulder, you are not to blame here! If anyone is, I am! I told you I was fine. I told you to leave me alone.”

He still can't look at her. “It doesn't matter.”

“Okay,” she says decisively, her voice tight. “Okay, then what if I move in?”

Mulder raises up to look at her in surprise. “Are you serious?”

“Mulder,” she says, quite serious. “You worry about me. I worry about you, too. You don’t know how many times I’ve been scared I’m going to lose you.” She takes his hand, squeezes it. “I love you. So yes. I'm serious.”

He's quiet for a second. “And you want to move in with me?”

Scully rolls her eyes. “Well, not if you're going to be smug about it.”

Mulder smirks. He's turning the idea over, trying to decide if it's a risk worth taking. “Won't people notice if we're living together?”

“Mulder, nobody pays attention to us at the FBI. And other than that, what does it matter?”

Mulder decides on a whim. “Skinner would know,” he says, kissing her quickly on the forehead. 

She moves to lean against his shoulder. “Skinner won't care.”

***

_ 1995 _

The time of the Pfaster case comes quicker then Mulder expected. He doesn’t take any cases, and they both take time off. Scully naps restlessly on the couch (their couch, it’s theirs now), and Mulder plays with her hair as he reads through files. He flips on the news to see a death fetishest recently arrested in Minneapolis.

He turns it off before he can read the name.

***

Worry over Scully seems inevitable at this point. So much had happened to her in a small time stretch. There are almost infinite times that Scully was in danger, and only a few of them are really remembered, really left severe scars, but Mulder remembers them all. He buys calendars that he fills with sloppy cursive of each case and their impact upon them, and hides them where he knows Scully won’t find them because the last thing she needs is a reminder, honestly.

When they are approaching the time that the alien bounty hunter took her, the time that the Samantha clone made her first appearance, Mulder decides to go visit his mother. He rationalizes it as a safety precaution. Just in case. But he can’t let himself answer the questions that are poking in the back of his mind.  _ What would you do if Samantha did show up? Would you believe her or not?  _

He takes Scully with him, for the sake of both of their sanity. Unfortunately, Teena Mulder doesn’t seem very interested in her son’s partner. Mulder wonders what she would say if she knew how much Scully means to him. If he outlined it out, tried to explain their relationship to each other, that Scully was different from anyone else he’d ever had a relationship with. If he even admitted that their relationship was more than a partnership.

But he doesn’t bother, and his mother leaves them alone in the house.

Scully suggests they search it for some evidence of that night. Mulder wants to snap something about how his mother has probably cleaned house in the time since that night, but he doesn’t bother. They search the rooms from inch to inch, and end in the living room. Mulder stands in the shadow left by his sister and recaps the night to Scully in a low voice. They both had secrets; Scully hadn’t told him about the night her father died, and Mulder hadn’t told her about the night Samantha was taken. Now, it all spills over in the dark, because it’s easier than admitting things in the light.

They get a hotel in town, so Mulder doesn’t have to bother with explaining to his mother why he is sharing a bed with his partner. He holds onto her in the middle of the night, and wonders what it was like to be taken by someone who looked like him. It probably ranked right up there with the Modell and Van Blundht incidents.

He stops in to see his father, just in case Samantha would go there. Still, nothing.

***

“Should we go to New Mexico?” Mulder asks one day when they’re at the table, testing the tap water. (Scully had to remind herself a few thousand times that paranoia could be keeping them alive before she’d agreed to sit down at that table.)

She snorts, not looking up. “Should I shoot you in the shoulder before we go?”

“I’m serious,” he says. “It couldn’t hurt. We might find something.”

Scully drums her fingers on the table. “Mulder, I don’t think we have a great track record with the West Coast. Something bad happens to us every time we go there.”

“Something bad happens to us everywhere we go, Scully,” Mulder reminds her. “And besides, about half of that wasn’t real.”

“What about the Sasquatch case?” 

“So you’re admitting that it was a Sasquatch?”

Scully rolls her eyes in response. “Or that case with the allegedly ‘cursed’ school children.”

“You’re never going to let me live that one down, are you.”

“Nope.” Scully leans over and kisses him quickly. 

Mulder cups his hand around the back of her neck so that she can’t move away. “Come on, Scully,” he says, his voice almost a whine.

“Mulder, why do you want to go to New Mexico? You know that we’re only a couple days away from…”

“The time my apparent father set the underground boxcar full of alien corpses I was hiding in on fire?” Mulder smiles slightly. “Yeah, I remember.”

“He’s not necessarily your father, you know. That was just in the other place.”

Mulder shrugs. “I think there may be some leads there. Besides, that old man that I talked to in 2016 in the other place said he did experiments in Roswell in the 1950s. That could be something we could look into.”

“You want to go to Roswell?”

“Worth a shot, Scully.”

She sighs. “Fine. But on one condition. No running off without me.”

“Done.”

“I mean it, Mulder. I’m not going to walk around telling people that you’re dead again.” 

“And I won’t run off. It’s been awhile since I’ve done that, anyway.” 

“That one case with the…”

He smirks at her endearingly. “Do you remember everything that happens on our cases?”

“Someone has to. Your case reports are inconclusive.”

***

In the end, New Mexico does things to Scully beside just remind her of a burning boxcar. It reminds her, instead, of a day where the sky was choked with smoke that, in a stroke of irony, had not killed the Smoking Man, and the heat had crawled up the back of her neck, when the pain of losing their son was still fresh, and it was halfway unfamiliar to be there with Mulder, after all that time apart. She licks her lips and shades her eyes from the sun while Mulder pokes around in the area where he swears the boxcar was. There is nothing there, like there is nothing anywhere else. If it weren’t for the tiniest snatch of evidence that there is a connection between extraterrestrial life and his sister’s disappearance in this world, Scully would’ve asked him to stop a long time ago. But there is evidence, and they’re still not sure why Duane Barry took her, a question that the answer to has died on the side of the Blue Ridge Parkway. There is something here, and it’s only a matter figuring out how much is real. 

Mulder walks up to where she is with a regretful look on his face. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Sorry for what? You’re following up on leads. I know how important this is to you, Mulder.”

He nods slowly in the heat. Scully can see that the lack of reliable leads is wearing him down. It’s been years since he searched for his sister like this. 

***

On the drive back from New Mexico, Scully grabs Mulder’s arm suddenly as he is driving. “Melissa,” she gasps. 

Mulder starts slightly, turning to face her. “Is it…”

“Soon.” Scully bites her lip, presses her feet against the dashboard. “I think we’ll make it in time. She’ll be okay. Those people were trying to kill me, anyway.”

Mulder looks away, stares ahead at the road. He knows that the only reason Melissa died was because he had involved Scully. And now, he doesn’t know what comfort to offer. 

When they get back, Melissa is still fine, but the date hasn’t quite arrived yet. Scully packs a bag, and goes to stay with her for a few days. Under her jacket, she wears a gun. 

***

“I like your boyfriend,” Melissa says to Scully that night.

Scully laughs at the generic term. “I’m not sure that’s a fitting term for Mulder, Missy.” 

Melissa shrugs. “I like him. But I don’t understand why you all call each other by your last names.”

Scully rolls her eyes. “We’re partners.”

Melissa asks some teasing questions about plans for the future, and Scully reverts to her childhood self, retaliating with a plethora of adolescent antics she still remembers. They stay up late talking, like they used to when they were kids, and Scully keeps one hand on the inside of her jacket, where her gun is, but nobody comes all night.

***

Scully has been considering the fact that they haven’t found any conclusive evidence besides her mysterious abduction on the night that it happens. Days later, they’re on the couch, working, when Scully happens a glance over at the window. Like he’s done every month on a cycle, Mulder had taped the X to his window. It has never led to anything conclusive, and Scully suspects he does it at this point out of pure habit. But now, the space behind the tape has a red glint to it. Almost like the effect you get from pressing a flashlight against your skin.

Scully has a very distinct feeling run up the length of her spine, and she shouts his name out of pure fear, and launches into him from the side, pinning him to the couch just as a bullet tears directly through the center of the X and embeds itself into the wall above their heads. Mulder, still half unaware of what exactly is going on, pulls Scully down further as he scans the room. No signs of a follow up bullet. A small red dot lingers in the space where the bullet hit, the space where Mulder’s head had been, for a split second before vanishing.

Scully sits up immediately, back ramrod against the couch, and she grabs her gun and whips it around to face the window. “Mulder, get out of here. Call Skinner.”

Mulder sits up, still disoriented. “Scully…”

“Mulder, go call Skinner!”

He runs into the back room, and dials the number as quickly as he can. He rattles off the sequence of events and hangs up before running into the living room to make sure a follow-up bullet hasn’t been fired. Scully is still in the line of fire, gun aimed almost frantically at the window.

“Scully,” he says gently, reaching out and guiding her away. “It’s okay. Skinner’s on the way.”

She turns to face him, moving the gun down to dangle by her right leg, and pulls him into a hug with her free arm. “Are you okay?”

He nods, leaning his face into her hair.

Skinner arrives and assures them he has a team canvassing the area. Scully tells him what happened in the same voice she used after the Duane Barry incident. If Skimmer wonders why there was an X taped to the window, or why Scully’s things are in Mulder’s home, he doesn’t ask. His team assures them that the area is clear. Whoever shot at them is gone now. 

Later, Mulder tells her that he thinks they should stop, and she almost can’t believe he is saying it. “Can’t you tell?” he says. “That was a warning, telling us we’re too close.”

“Mulder, we haven’t found anything.”

“We’ve found enough. Enough that they don’t want us to get any closer.” Mulder grabs her hand. “I’m not saying we should stop, I’m just saying we should step back for a while. This is obviously dangerous. If that bullet had been off by a few inches…”

It wouldn’t be Mulder if he wasn’t more concerned for her then for himself, even though she was the one who saved his life. Scully would like to be able to hang on with him, to encourage him to go to the end, but she isn’t sure what consequences that will have here. She remembers the car trunk, putting Mulder in the ground, waiting for news of her son, alien DNA in her veins, cancer boring it’s way through her brain. She can’t allow it to go that far again.

***

_ 1996 _

For a while, nothing happens, and Mulder is sure that they made the right decision by backing off. They work cases, and the FBI eyes them suspiciously behind a bullet-proof sheet of glass. Scully suggests getting a dog. (They don’t get a dog.) She drags him home for Thanksgiving, and they both pretend that Bill doesn’t still somehow hate Mulder with a passion. Everyone else present in the Scully family seems to like him, and there are three more seats filled at the table then what normally would be, so Scully isn’t inclined to complain too much, all hellish things considered. 

In February, they take a case about a mutant in New York. A mutant that, unfortunately, has the great capacity to hold a gun. During the chase, Mulder follows him into a warehouse where he is holding Scully at gunpoint with her own gun, her back pressed against the wall of the warehouse, hands up. The man peers back at Mulder, smiles at him. And suddenly, Mulder is pointing a gun at Scully again, and it’s like they’re back in a hospital again, and Mulder can do nothing to stop the bullet. He aims his weapon at the back of his head and shouts for him to drop the gun. 

The mutant turns his head slightly, and Scully immediately drops to the floor like a stone. Mulder fires, and the mutant falls. He drops his weapon in surprise. He’d just now remembered that this is the day of the Modell case. 

This is fairly generic stuff for working at the FBI, or in any division of law enforcement. Lose your gun, be held at gunpoint. It’s happened to them fairly often in any version of the universe. But this time was worse, because all he saw was himself pointing a gun at Scully. 

He has nightmares later, and Scully holds him while he shakes in his sleep and whispers  _ it’s not your fault _ into his hair, as if this could soothe him. 

***

He wants to marry her.

It'd never been a thought that had crossed his mind too much before. He'd never considered himself a marriage type of guy. But he wants to marry her. And the feeling is overwhelming, so he says it on a Saturday morning when she's working on a case report on the couch. 

She doesn't look up, just pushes the glasses up her nose and says, “Okay.”

Mulder blinks in surprise. “Really?”

She shrugs noncommittally. “Well, we'd have to keep it low profile, since we wouldn't be allowed to work together anymore if the FBI knew. But if we just talk to my parents, I'm sure we could work something out.”

He studies her curiously. “You want to marry me.”

Scully sighs and looks up at him. “Mulder, I've known you for over 25 years.”

“Hell doesn't count.”

“It counts.” She kisses him and says, “I love you. And yes, I want to marry you.”

***

It’s almost laughable when no one notices the new wedding bands that they both begin wearing at the same time. “See, there are perks to being the FBI’s most unwanted,” Mulder mutters to her one day while they’re waiting to meet with Skinner. Scully twists the gold encircling her finger and rolls her eyes.

The marriage doesn’t change much. They still work long hours. They still head home together at the end of the day. They still work on Mulder’s couch and argue over monsters, and Scully still brings Mulder with her to visit their family. But the rings are almost like a connecting force between them. When Scully loses Mulder on a case, she touches the cool metal while she searches the woods for him, as if there is some of him imprinted there. They both touch their rings distractedly at random intervals. She sees it almost as a lifeline to him. Like maybe if they wear their rings, they won’t have to leave each other.

***

_ 1997 _

They both remember the date this time, and the silence is deafening. Scully withdraws, and Mulder doesn’t bother with trying to coax her back. They work in silence, eat in silence. It’s easier than talking about the fact that by this point in the other place, cancer was making it’s way through her brain.

Scully offers to make a doctor’s appointment on the day of, and Mulder agrees without looking at her. He doesn’t want to confront the fact, but it’s impossible not to confront it. It’s highly implausible that Scully has cancer, because it was originally the result of an abduction that he had predicted. It’s highly implausible, yes, but for once, it’s a feeling that neither of them can shake, so Scully calls and makes an appointment, and Mulder holds her after she hangs up the phone.

He doesn’t bring flowers to the waiting room, because it would be almost like admitting something was wrong. He sits in an uncomfortable chair and waits, and twists the metal encircling his finger, almost like he can pretend nothing is wrong. 

When she comes out, he searches her face for any sign of bad news.

She smiles at him, and shrugs.

He moves forward, and they’re hugging in a hospital again, but this time, there isn’t the underlying fear that he will never get the chance again. He kisses her now, and wishes he’d done it then, but now is enough. Now, they know they have all the time in the world.

***

Things are almost easier afterwards. There is no ultimatum, no limit on their time together, no ticking clock counting down how long they have until one of them is ripped away. They solve cases, and argue over monsters, over who gets to drive, over whether or not they should get a dog. They don’t end up in hospitals. They don’t worry constantly over whether the other is still alive. They don’t go home alone at the end of the night.

Mulder is still astonished that no one has noticed the marriage. Scully still insists on tucking her ring into her pocket whenever they are in the main part of the building, but Mulder doesn’t bother with his. And people in other places have always mistaken them for a couple. “For a building full of FBI agents, they’re not very observant,” Mulder quips to her on the elevator down to the basement one day.

Scully rolls her eyes. “Skinner knows.”

It’s confirmed when he’s scolding them about work on a case, insubordination. “I’m putting you two on mandatory leave, effective immediately,” he says sternly.

(Mulder wonders if it would improve the situation if he called him Skinman.) “But sir…” he starts.

“This is not a matter up for debate, agents.” Skinner looks down at his desk sheepishly, and mutters, “It’s about time you two took a honeymoon, anyway.”

Scully’s eyes almost bug out of her head. “Sir?” she stammers.

“Hand over your badges and guns and get out of my sight.”

Scully mutters, “I told you so” outside of his office. She ignores any subsequent suggestions of honeymooning in West Virginia, Point Pleasant to be exact, very nice this time of year, and hey, maybe they could finally find that mothman, go out into the woods with sleeping bags. 

***

Their first case back is a bit familiar.

It’s the case of a student at Quantico who got in an accident. A malfunctioning simulator that resulted in cardiac arrest that the paramedics had been able to revive him from. But when he’d woken up, he’d acted crazy.

“For one thing, he claims that he’s missing his left arm,” the doctor explains as he leads them down the stainless white hall. “Or he should be, at least. For another, he claims to have died in 2001. And - oh, here’s the real kicker - he claims that it’s 2016.”

Scully’s eyes widen, and she exchanges a look with Mulder. By the look on his face, she can tell he is thinking the same thing. “And you say he arrested?” he asks the doctor.

“Two entire minutes.”

Scully swallows roughly. “And what was his name again?”

“Alex Krycek.” 

They both stop dead in their tracks, and exchange a look. 

The doctor stops, too, looking back at them. “Are you coming?” he asks.

***

It’s definitely Krycek, and reflecting on the doctor’s description, Scully doesn’t know how she could’ve thought any different. What he said fits exactly with what happened to Krycek in the other place. Except for the fact that it’s impossible. 

“How could it be him, Mulder?” she hisses. “It’s impossible! It’s been four years since we came back from there!”

“Scully, a place like that could exist apart from time. It could be beyond our understanding as to why he’s come back.”

“Still.” She crosses her arms. “Besides, if we were all there together, then he’ll remember us, and this reunion will be a lot less pleasant than I think we’d prefer.”

“This might could give us some insight on what happened to us,” he says, reaching out and touching her wrist. 

“You don’t think this’ll be another lead, Mulder.”

“You never know, Scully. But I’m willing to try.”

She follows him into the room because she can’t not. Krycek looks at them without any excitement. He is restrained to the bed. Scully wonders if he wasn’t able to handle the transition as well as they were.

“Mr. Krycek?” she says, feeling foolish. “We’d like to ask you some questions. Please.”

He doesn’t answer. He stares hard at the wall behind them.

“Mr. Krycek?” Mulder asks. No response. “Krycek?”

They try several more times to get him to answer, but nothing rouses him. He stares straight ahead. 

***

Two hours later, and they’re still at the hospital, waiting for Krycek to wake up from a nap, hoping he’ll be more responsive after some rest. Scully is still in the bathroom. She told him she isn’t feeling well, but she refused to go home at his urges. 

Suddenly, several nurses come running down the hall in a panic. Mulder stops them and asks them what’s going on. 

“The hospital is on alert,” one answers. “A patient escaped somehow from the hospital.”

Mulder is afraid to ask, but he does anyway. “Who?” 

“Alex Krycek.”

Mulder curses under his breath. He draws his gun and exits the hospital in a hurry. He rounds the building before coming to the river that runs behind it. At the edge stands a man in a hospital gown, facing away from Mulder.

He approaches slowly. “Krycek?” he calls, lowering his gun to his side. He reaches out and touches Krycek gently on the shoulder.

The man immediately turns before Mulder can react and bashes something hard into his head. 

Mulder drifts out of consciousness. He comes to, briefly. He’s lost his gun again. Blood is trickling down in his eyes. He can’t move.

Krycek has a hold of him, and is hissing in his ear, “You know. You were  _ there.  _ I remember.”

Mulder tries to respond, fails. Krycek pulls him up into a halfway standing position. “You were the reason. All those years… we both caused so much suffering for each other. But then again, this world isn’t much better, is it.”

He drags Mulder forward. “So I’m going to do you a favor and send you back.”

Before Mulder slips into unconsciousness, he notices that Krycek is dragging him into the river. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> am i the type of person to insert a cheap cliffhanger so you'll read the next part? hell yes. (sorry i promise i’m not usually this cheap please don’t leave.)  
> anyways. a.) you don't have to worry about mulder dying. MULDER LIVES FOREVER. and b.) in case you're thinking “what were u thinking” i’m going for “angsty fluff with hints (and only hints bc im cryptic) of mythology” thing. i hope i’ve achieved that, at least. with the krycek thing, well, i needed someone to try and drown mulder for undisclosed reasons (aka wait for pt 3), and i wanted to imply that the other place exists out of time. also krycek made the most sense. would jeffrey spender try to drown mulder? i don’t think so. (okay, krycek may not try to drown mulder either but let’s pretend he would.)  
> i feel the need to assure you that i do love and care about these characters. a lot of this actually felt pretty corny to me, angst or not, so i hope it wasn’t too corny? or too angsty? idk. i hope it was good for everyone who wanted me to continue.  
> i wanted to have some symbolism in the three parts, have a specific focus or theme per part. 1 is about mulder and scully individually, and how they deal with returning from the other place. 2 is about mulder and scully dealing with it together (and also their relationship).  
> i did the sniper scene because i wanted to hint more at the mythology. (i’m gonna admit i don't know what im doing now instead of later, just pretend this makes sense much like i do when watching the show.) i originally was gonna do the dot on the wall but i always thought the x on the window was a sniper target when i first watched the show so i banked off of that.  
> maybe it's dorky to get msr hitched for the fun of it but i like it. sue me. no, fox network, not you. i could’ve gone into more wedding detail, but have you ever planned a wedding? i’ve seen it firsthand. mulder and scully have gone through enough.  
> this probably isn’t what anyone was looking for when they asked me to continue, but i hope you enjoyed my weird little angst-fluff part 2 anyway.


	3. part three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His son is born on a Tuesday in May.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since my struggle ii isn't Canon i’m doing a small reyes redemption. just call me reyes redeemer. no this part is not about reyes. seek and ye shall find. out what i’m talking about.  
> so many revamped quotes from the original series i hate myself. also i used the word 'shit' entirely too much. abnd asshole. shit, i'm an asshole.  
> warning for non descriptive sort of violence (but mild, mild, if you watch this show, you should be fine), sort of scenes of death, child alien abduction (nothing graphic or anything, similar to samantha abduction). also i think my end a/n took up like. a page and a half. so skip that if u so please.  
> this sits somewhere between “disgusting fluff” and “annoying angst”. take ur pick, i guess.

**part three**

He wakes in a hospital bed. He blinks a few times to clear the fog from his eyes, and immediately looks around for Scully. Skinner is there instead, looking at the wall on the other side of Mulder with a focused sort of mourning.

But it's a different Skinner. An older Skinner.

Mulder tries to sit up, and immediately realizes what's happened. He's back, he's dead. He remembers Krycek dragging him into the river, and then… nothing. He's dead, and he's ended up back here. Only fitting, perhaps. It’s the intended effect.

Skinner notices him. “Agent Mulder,” he says.

Mulder has to ask. “Scully?” he whispers.

Skinner blinks heavily. “I'm so sorry,” he says, his voice overcome with emotion.

***

_She's not gone. Not really. I'm the one who died. She's fine. She'll be fine without me. You should be glad she's not here._

But as he touches the empty space on his ring finger, he can't help but think that if he has to spend eternity without her, the least he could've gotten was a piece of her to hold onto.

***

The funeral is on a Friday. It's full of people Mulder doesn't want to see but isn't going to send away (as he technically has no right). Bill, and a person he assumes is her other brother, Charlie. Agent Reyes. Agent Doggett, who hangs back from the rest of the crowd like he is uncomfortable. Tad O’Malley, who Mulder would very much like to punch in the jaw.

Bill comes over and punches him instead, as they lower her coffin into the ground. Skinner pulls him off of Mulder, and he walks away without fighting back. It was his fault, after all.

He drives home and tries not to picture her body. It'd been an open casket. He'd touched the side of her face and thought about how she'd been cut open, the same way she'd cut others open. He reminds himself that the real Scully is safe and alive back in the real world. His wife. His wife is safe and alive.

_Welcome to eternal damnation._

He brought her dog home. The animal seems to sense that something is wrong. He seems to miss her. He lifts his muzzle from Mulder's bed when he enters, and whimpers plaintively. “She's not coming back,” Mulder tells the dog bitterly.

Mulder lies on the bed and thinks of the years they'd had. He wonders if Scully found him dead in the water. He wonders if she'd had to bury him again, the way he'd buried her. He wishes there was a way out.

***

It's the third day when it happens. He's on the bed, dog resting against his thigh, when a light appears outside the house.

Mulder sits straight up. It's shining through his windows, an eerie shade of blue. A familiar shade. He'd been surrounded by abductees, and they were welcoming him, taking him with them… he was dreaming of his son, and they took him…

The light flashes bright, and vanishes. Mulder hears a _thunk_ outside on his porch.

He tears outside, gun drawn, but he immediately shoves it aside when he sees the kid on his porch. Sprawled out on his back, arms thrown to the sides like a ragdoll, he lies, chest rising and falling with some slight reluctance.

Something inside Mulder's chest twists - recognition. The kid still has Scully's coloring. He can see signs of her in his face, as well as signs of him in the shape of his jaw. He's tall and lanky, legs folded up but not hiding their size. His hair is a mop of light brown, sticking out around his face.

“William?” Mulder asks, his voice rasping.

He doesn't answer. He's unconscious. There are bruises along his arms, probably effects of the alien ship. Mulder looks up and sees the light in the sky. He plunges forward, and grabs his son's tall form in his arms, carrying him inside the house. He sets William on the couch, and locks the door firmly.

***

Mulder sits in a chair facing the door, gun across his lap, and watches his son's form across the couch. William sleeps quietly, snoring softly into a throw pillow.

_He was never real._

_But here, he is. He's real._

The kid starts to awaken, eyes widened. “Dad?” he murmurs.

Mulder starts to answer before he remembers that, technically, he is not William's father.

“Mom?” he moans, more desperate, before sitting straight up, eyes frantic. They fall on Mulder, and he starts, involuntarily backing up.

“Whoa!” Mulder shoves the gun aside, and holds up his hands in an “I surrender” gesture.

“Who the fuck are you?” he shouts. “Where am I? Where are my parents?”

“William, just calm down,” Mulder says, extending his hands towards him.

“How do you know my name?” William roars, furious. “Have you been stalking me or some shit?”

“No! You were left here, William. I brought you in to keep you safe.”

William is blazing as he looks at Mulder. Mulder blinks. _Oh, God._

His eyes are the same as they were when he was a baby. They are utterly Scully’s eyes, icy and cold and angry.

“So who are you?” he repeats, his voice sharp and accusatory.

Mulder really knows of no other way to say it, so he just blurts it out. “I’m your birth father.”

William withdraws further into the arm of the chair, eyes widened. Mulder can definitely tell he wasn’t planning to hear that.

“How do you…” he starts. He seems to change his mind. “Is your name Scully?”

Mulder starts immediately, staring at William with wide eyes. “What?”

“I was… beamed up from my backyard,” he explains. “When I woke up, briefly, I heard men talking. One of them said, ‘is that the Scully boy’, and the other one said, ‘that’s the one’.” He looks Mulder in the eye defiantly. “So… is your name Scully?”

“That…” Mulder clears his throat painfully. “That was your mother’s name.”

If William notices the past tense, he either doesn’t comment or doesn’t care. He shrugs. “Do you know about the aliens?”

“How do you know about the aliens?”

“I just know. I just know these things,” he says. “The same way I know that you’re not lying about being my birth father.”

Mulder doesn’t comment on this. Scully had told him here, in the other place, about how she’d seen the mobile moving one night of it’s own accord, of the cult who had taken William. He’s not surprised, or at least, he’s not surprised in this reality. He's honestly having a hard time differentiating between them, but in this reality, they have a son with undisclosed powers.

William moves to a more comfortable position, although his body is still tensed. “So,” he says conversationally. “What’s your name, anyway?”

Mulder doesn’t feel like explaining the whole Fox thing at the moment. “You can call me Mulder,” he says.

“Mulder,” William repeats. “Don’t suppose you’d let me call my parents? Let them know I’m alive and all?”

Mulder studies his son carefully. “No,” he says gently. “I’m sorry. But it’s too dangerous.”

“Why is that?”

“You know the people that abducted you? The reason we gave you up for adoption?” Their eyes meet. “They could be watching,” he says. “And that wouldn’t be good for you or your parents.”

(The words “your parents” sting a little as they exit Mulder’s mouth, but he forces himself to ignore it.)

***

“Stop the car.”

Mulder looks over at his son in the passenger seat. He makes the request in a hollow voice, his hand pressed against the dashboard. He’s wearing a gray windbreaker over his dirty, ripped T-shirt that Mulder had handed him as they exited the house. “It’s cold outside,” he’d said. “It’s February.” William had shrugged it on and followed him out to the car without a word. Mulder had promised to get him to safety. and he hadn’t protested. Now, it seems he’s going to.

“We can’t stop,” Mulder tries to explain. “They could be watching us. We have to be careful.”

“Stop the car,” William grinds out, his teeth clenched.

Mulder tries to reason again. “William…”

“Stop the fucking car!”

The car halts suddenly in the middle of the road. Mulder presses the gas several times, but the car remains stubbornly still. He looks down at the pedals. The brake is pressed all the way to the floor of it’s own accord. He looks at William, who is staring at the brake determinedly.

Mulder shifts the car to Park, and turns to face William. “What is it,” he asks tensely.

“I want to call my parents.”

 _Well, he managed to inherit her stubbornness._ “William, I told you, it’s not safe,” he says. “But I’m an FBI agent.” He jabs a finger at his badge lying open in the backseat. “I’ve called my boss. He’s sending someone to find your parents. We’ll meet them, and you all can go into hiding.”

“Because we’re in danger from the aliens.”

“Something like that. Listen, you can call your parents when we get to a secure location.”

William slumps back in the seat. “I’m sorry about the car,” he mutters.

“It’s okay.” Mulder shifts the car, and starts off again, staying just at the speed limit mark so they won’t be stopped.

They drive in silence for a minute before William speaks up again. “So where’s my mother?”

Mulder starts, the car swerving slightly. “What?”

“You know,” William says. “This ‘Scully’. I’m guessing you’re not married, since you don’t share a last name. So where is she?”

Mulder blinks a couple times, takes deep breaths to keep from faltering. “She - she’s dead.”

William seems surprised by this answer. “What?” he stammers, looking over at Mulder in surprise.

Mulder feels the need to explain. “We were partners at the FBI. We were working on a case, and a suspect shot her. Shot me, too. I made a recovery, and… she didn’t.” _Minus the four year excursion to the real world where she is alive and I am not, of course._

William doesn’t say anything at first, and Mulder didn’t expect him to. How are you supposed to react to news like this? But then he speaks up. “What was her name?” he asks quietly.

Mulder intakes a sharp breath. “Dana Scully,” he says into the void.

He absently runs his finger over the empty space on his ring finger.

***

Crappy hotels seem to be the standard for anyone shacking up with Mulder. He gets a room with two beds, and sits on the one William didn’t claim while he showers in the bathroom.

He’s not sure what he’s going to do without her. He wants to call her up, tell her everything there is to know about their son. _He still has your eyes and your coloring and - unfortunately enough - my sarcasm. And he reminds me of you, Scully. I wish we’d had the chance to raise him._

They could have, he realizes. If he hadn’t insisted on their talking to Krycek, they could’ve gone home, gone to bed, lived out life as a married couple, a partnership held together by one last tie, and they could’ve had the kids they’d wanted and finally fulfilled that urge to be parents.

But how is that any different from them having kids after giving William up? He’d suggested it here, once, and she’d disagreed resolutely. _It wouldn’t be fair, to anyone,_ she’d whispered into his shirt, and as much as he’d wanted to, he’d had to agree. It wasn’t fair then, and it isn’t fair now. In this universe, in this Hell, he is a father who gave up on his son. And since he’s lived through that, he’ll always be that father who gave up on his son.

William exits the room at this point, and moves to sit on the other bed, facing Mulder. He clears his throat awkwardly and pulls at a loose thread on his jeans. “Can I see a picture?”

Mulder looks up at him. “What?”

“A picture,” William says. “Of my mother. If you, uh, have one.”

Mulder swallows roughly. “Yeah, I do.” He reaches out and grabs his wallet from the bedside table. One of Scully with William would be his ideal choice for this occasion, but there weren’t very many of those to begin with, and in any case, he doesn’t have a copy. (There weren’t very many pictures of William, period. Scully had told him once that she’d held back on certain momentous occasions, such as baby pictures, in hopes of sharing them with him, but then time had run out. Which was another thing to keep him up at night.) So he pulls out a small photo from some of their earlier investigative days. He’d snapped the photo and surprised Scully out of her case file trance. She’d scowled at him, half-angry, and hit him on the shoulder after the fact, but the picture had caught her in a moment of slight contentment, blazing hair tied up, glasses slipping down her nose. He hands the photo over to William, who handles it delicately, and studies it with great reverence. Mulder watches him carefully. He wishes Scully were here to see their son, all lanky limbs and tangled hair, and her eyes.

William hands him back the photo. “She was beautiful,” he says huskily.

Mulder nods in agreement. He doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he looks away tucking the photo into his wallet again.

“So you met through the FBI?”

Mulder looks back at him. “Yes,” he says. “She was assigned to spy on me by higher powers.”

William snorts. “Can’t trust the government, huh.”

“That’s right.”

William stares with some slight surprise. “Okay,” he says. “Why did the government assign her to spy on you?”

Mulder sighs. “I was getting too close to secrets they wanted hidden. Secrets related to extraterrestrial life.”

“Yeah, I figured aliens were involved with this shit,” William says. “But why were you poking around?”

He rattles off his standard backstory with ease - it was the one thing, unfortunately, that he was allowed to keep in the transition from the other place. “My sister was abducted by aliens when I was twelve and she was eight. I always hoped I’d be able to find her.”

“And did you?”

“Your mother and I eventually found out that she’d died.”

William obviously isn’t sure how to respond to this. He says, “So Mom didn’t spy on you?”

Mulder shrugs. “I’m not sure. Either way, your mother got thrown headlong into this mess and suffered the consequences.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was abducted after about a year later. This abduction undoubtedly led to your conception.” Mulder feels strange explaining this. He never expected he’d have to tell his son that it was possible that he was some sort of product of alien technology. (He hopes William doesn’t ask him to elaborate, because he’s still not sure he understands.)

William chews his lower lip. “So that’s why I have these… abilities, I guess?”

Mulder nods.

“That’s why you gave me up?”

Mulder flinches. “William, you’ve got to understand something,” he says. “It wasn’t your mother’s fault.” _Even if a small part of me always blamed her._ “I wasn’t there when she found out she was pregnant. And I had to leave again, right after you were born.”

William toes the carpet sheepishly. “Where were you?” he mutters.

“Well, the first time, I was abducted by aliens.” He leaves out the whole _and I died_ thing. “And the second time, I was on the run. Your mom had to handle it all herself. She gave you up for adoption because she thought you’d be in danger.”

William studies him with a sort of disdain. Mulder doesn't blame him. He blames himself for leaving. William  looks down at his shoes, hands clasped in his lap. “Can I call my parents?” he mutters.

“Sure,” Mulder says, handing him the hotel phone. William dials the number without looking at him, and Mulder tries not to look like the world's biggest asshole (because that's exactly what he feels like).

“Dad, it's me,” William says, and it still takes Mulder a minute to remind himself that William isn't talking to him.

“Yeah, I'm okay.” He pauses. “I'm in a hotel room. I don't know where. Maryland, I think.” Pause. “I'm with an FBI agent.”

Mulder flinches a little at the textbook description.

“He's, uh, he's my birth father,” William mutters. Pause. “I don't know how I know, okay? I just know!” Pause. “They dropped me on his front porch, Dad.” Pause. “Well, he says he's bringing me home.” Pause. “Okay, fine.” He shoves the receiver at Mulder. “Wants to talk to you.”

Mulder takes the phone gingerly. The man on the other end is already shouting, “Hello? Hello? Who is this?”

Mulder tries to iron out a menacing or annoyed tone. “This is Special Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI.”

“What the hell are you doing with my son?”

Mulder grimaces. “I'm trying to get him home, sir. But I need to be careful. It could be dangerous.”

“And why is that?”

Mulder wants to punch a wall. Or better yet, this guy’s face. “Someone abducted your son,” he snaps. “Isn’t that enough of an answer?”

William doesn’t seem surprised by this argument, and he goes on ignoring them. (He seems to have gotten a hold of Mulder’s phone and is scrolling through it. Mulder makes a note to say something after he finishes dealing with this asshole.) “Look, I want to protect your family,” he says. “I’m going to have an agent come and get you and your wife. I’ll meet you with William, and you’ll be put into protective custody. Trust me, your safety is our top priority.”

“All right,” says William’s father reluctantly.

Mulder moves the phone away from his face, and mutters, “Do you want to talk to your dad again?”

William shakes his head tightly, not looking up.

“I’ll let William contact you again,” Mulder says into the phone. He hangs up without another word. He isn’t interested in continuing this conversation. “What’s your last name?” he asks. “So I don’t sound like a jackass when I talk to your parents again.”

“It’s Van de Kamp.”

William Van de Kamp. _Well_ , he thinks stubbornly, _William Scully sounds a lot better_. “Okay,” Mulder says. “Okay.”

William looks up, and their eyes meet again. “He’s a good dad.”

_Why the fuck are you telling me that?_

“But he’s also kind of an asshole.”

Mulder smiles slightly at that, unable to stop it. “What are you doing with my phone?” he asks, trying to sound authoritative. (He realizes he does not.)

William hands it to him, and stalks back to the bathroom without a word. Mulder looks down at the screen; a picture of Scully is pulled up.

***

In the morning, Skinner arrives. He taps on the door, calling out, “Agent Mulder?”

“Wha-” William stammers, lifting his head, hair sticking up wildly. “Who’s that?”

Mulder is already awake. “Skinman,” he offers up without explanation, moving to open the door.

Skinner steps into the room. He looks at the boy in the bed, and asks, “Is that William?” in a low voice.

Mulder looks back at the sleep-rumpled boy, and grins slightly. “Yeah. William, this is Assistant Director Walter Skinner.”

“Hey,” William mutters, climbing out of bed. He looks slightly embarrassed, and his expression reminds Mulder of Scully, like everything else does.

Skinner clears his throat uncomfortably. “I remember… when you were a baby, William,” he says.

William blinks, eyes wide, and Mulder realizes that for all their talking about his past, he still hasn’t found someone who could say that. “Really?”

Skinner nods.

William nods back, as if unsure what to do, and disappears into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. Mulder turns to face Skinner again, who has a strange look on his face. “He looks like you, Mulder.”

He’s surprised by this. “Really? I think he looks like Scully.” Maybe this is just because he can’t to seeing her everywhere. He wishes it were possible for her to come haunt them, just for a little while, so she can see what her grown-up son looks like. Mulder changes the subject. “What’s the plan?”

“I sent Doggett to pick up William’s parents. I’m going to take your car, and you all are going to take mine. Reyes will meet you in Vermont, and you’ll go with her to meet the Van de Kamps.” Skinner seems worried, tempered by his uncomfort. “Are you sure all this secretiveness will make a difference, Mulder?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… they always found you and Scully when they wanted to. They were able to find William, even after Scully gave him up.”

He sighs. “I don’t know. But I’m not willing to take any risks, either. Not where my son is concerned.”

He has no monopoly on calling William his son. He was there for around two days before taking off, and when he returned, he was too late. He has never been a father outside of his halfway daydreams, his hopes that he and Scully would be able to start over in the real world. He has never done anything of meaning for William. But still, there is no other term to refer to him.

***

Skinner’s car is abnormally clean. It’s the kind of car Scully would love, uncluttered and pristine, and Mulder almost feels like he is pressing his hands against a painting in a museum by sitting in it. He offers to let William drive. “I don’t have my permit with me,” William mutters.

They’re silent for a time before William speaks again. “When did my mother die?”

Mulder flinches. “About two weeks ago.” _I was in a coma for about a week after, and Skinner insisted on checking with me before making funeral arrangements._

“Oh. Wow,” William says, hushed. “So that’s why you get upset whenever I mention her.”

That would be why, yes.

“Did you love her?”

Mulder would get mad at this, but it is a fair question, it would seem. “I do love her,” he says.

_She’s not dead, I’m dead. She’s not dead, I’m dead._

“Why do you call her Scully? I thought her name was Dana.”

Mulder snorts. “The same reason she called me Mulder.”

“Don’t like Fox?”

Mulder looks over at the kid with surprise. “I don’t remember telling you my name.”

William shrugs. “But you told Dad while I was in the room. What kind of cases did you work for the FBI?”

“You’ve got a lot of questions.”

“I want to know about… her.”

“They were cases with unexplained phenomena. Otherwise known as X Files.”

William sits up straighter. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“So like… ghosts and Bigfoot and shit?”

Mulder laughs. “Something like that.”

“Was she into that?”

He laughs again. “Your mother? Exactly the opposite.”

“So she wasn’t a believer? And you were?”

“Exactly,” Mulder replies, thinking that there is a lot more to explain about the two of them, but here is a start. “And what about you?”

William pauses, bracing his foot against the dash. “I don’t have any problem believing in supernatural stuff, I guess… but I’d need more proof before going, like, ghost hunting or whatever.”

Mulder wants to laugh again, because William’s beliefs, it seems, are caught exactly between theirs, and he should probably tell William to get his foot off the dash so he doesn’t leave a footprint in Skinner’s too-clean car, but he doesn’t bother.

“Did you ever find anything?”

 _Too much_. Mulder goes for the easiest story, one that fits into this reality, and is proof positive, and a fairly un-scary story. “I met a were-lizard once,” he says. “I saw him transform.”

William’s eyes bug out slightly, and he leans forward in anticipation. “No shit!”

“Shit,” Mulder confirms. “Want to hear more?”

***

By the time they meet Reyes, Mulder has relayed every non-scarred-for-life story that he can think of. William, it seems, is greatly entertained by monsters and their relentless torment on the human world. Mulder can’t help feeling nostalgic. This is what he’d always pictured doing with any children they would have. He wishes Scully were here to correct him, because he’s pretty sure he got at least half of the details skewed.

Reyes is waiting at a McDonald’s. Mulder hands William a ten, and tells him to go get some food. He goes to talk to Reyes, who hugs him immediately. Mulder had never known Reyes all that well, but he guesses they had at least one thing in common, besides the fact that they were the less skeptical of the partners that had worked on the X Files.

“We didn’t get to talk at the funeral,” Reyes says. “I was so sorry to hear about Dana. We hadn’t talked in years, but…”

Mulder hugs her back quickly before pulling away. “She missed you,” he tells her. “After we left, in 2002.”

Reyes offers a sad smile. Mulder would reassure the woman if he could but he’s fairly sure that even she would think he was crazy if he told her that Scully is alive in another realm of reality, so he shifts the subject. “Thank you so much for doing this.”

“I’m glad to,” Reyes says. “For Dana. I’ve been in communication with John, and he says they’ll meet us in a few hours.”

“That’s good,” Mulder says, even if he’s not ready to see William go. It’s like they’ve formed some small bond in the time they’ve spent together.

William comes out just then, a burger dripping ketchup in one hand, a milkshake clutched in the other. Reyes immediately smiles widely at him.

“William, this is Agent Monica Reyes, an old friend of Scully’s,” Mulder explains. “And of mine.”

Reyes extends a hand. “Hello, William. It’s been forever,” she says brightly, as if it’d just been a few years, and William could actually recall who she is.

William reacts better than he did with Skinner, shifting the milkshake into the crook of his elbow so he can shake Reyes’s hand. (Mulder would guess that either his mood has improved throughout the day, it was the having just woken up that tempered the awkwardness earlier, or Reyes’s cheery disposition helps him feel more comfortable in contrast to Skinner’s grumpy one.) “You knew me when I was a baby?” he asks her.

“I did. I used to babysit you, actually.”

William smiles tentatively at her.

“Should we get going?” Mulder offers. “We’re just a few hours out from your parents, William.”

“Sure,” William says. “That’d be great.” (There is some slight regret in his tone, and Mulder almost allows himself to hope that maybe William doesn’t want to leave him, either.)

***

The car stops suddenly. Reyes hits the gas a couple times in confusion. “That’s funny,” she says, opening her car door and moving to check under the hood.

Mulder looks back at William, who is opening his door. He immediately follows. His son is standing in the center of the road, wind pushing at his hair. He scans it up and down in confusion, one hand tucked into his pocket.

Things are too quiet. Reyes is cursing, struggling with the car. Mulder feels as if the entire world has frozen.

“No,” he mutters.

A beam appears out of nowhere, zeroing in on William.

“No!” Mulder shouts.

His son turns to look at him, Scully’s eyes staring back at him.

“Willia-”

The world explodes around him.

He is on fire and burning and in agony. He is cold and floating and water burns in his lungs. There are hands on his chest, pushing, a mouth against his, pushing air into his lungs. “God, Mulder, please, breathe, Mulder, breathe.”

He obliges, coughing water up, fading in and out of consciousness. “Oh, God,” Scully says. “Oh, thank god.” She touches his cheek, and he can feel the metal of her wedding band. “You had me big time, Mulder.”

***

He wakes up in a hospital bed again, and she's holding his hand. When she sees he's awake, she smiles down at him.

“Scully,” he says. “Oh, god, Scully.”

“You went back,” she says. “Didn't you.”

He squeezes her hand. “You were dead, Scully.”

“Mulder, I'm so sorry.” She brushes the side of his face, and clenches her eyes shut.

“I had to bury you,” he says. “I suppose it’s even now.”

Scully makes a choked sound that could be a laugh or a sob. “It’s not a competition, Mulder.” She smiles shakily. “Besides, you were dead, too. I just brought you back.”

Mulder closes his eyes. “I missed you so much.”

She brushes his hair back. “How long were you there?”

“Couple weeks.” He opens his eyes to look up at her. He’s not sure how he’s going to relay what happened to him, but he instinctively knows that she needs to know. “I saw him, Scully.”

Somehow, she knows who he means. She pales slightly, eyes widening. “You saw William?” she whispers.

“Not just that, but I spent time with him. I had to take him home, to his parents. My god, Scully, he still had your eyes.”

Scully breathes tremulously.

“I don’t even know what it means,” he says. “That I saw him.”

Scully blinks several times before smiling and answering. “I think I known what it means,” she says.

Mulder is a little surprised by this - he hadn’t really expected her to shoot him down, but he also hadn’t expected her to present him with a solution. “What’s that,” he replies softly.

She squeezes his hand. “I’m pregnant.”

***

They’d told her after they’d secured him, and done a routine check of her, after they’d checked Krycek from where she’d shot him in the shoulder and moved him back into the psych ward. It had felt like deja vu, like maybe the only time she could find out was when Mulder was somewhere between life and death. The first thing she’d asked was, “Is he gonna be okay?” The doctor had given her a strange look and assured her once again that her husband would come out all right. The only reason she’d asked is because she knew she didn’t want to do this alone again.

The idea both excites and terrifies her. The terrifying thoughts are these: _what if he leaves again, what if the baby’s in danger, what if I lose the baby again, what if this is just some long-winded scheme to replace William._ (She knows the baby won’t replace William, just like William didn’t replace Emily, but the idea still terrifies her just the same.) The exciting thoughts are these: _we get another chance to be parents, and he’ll pull through, be here for the entire thing, our child will have both parents, this is good._ Both make her heart race with equal fervor.

She honestly didn’t know how to tell him. The first time, he’d been in a hospital bed, and she could tell he’d already noticed even as she told him. He’d murmured _congratulations_ and looked off into the corner. He’d been traumatized, broken, thought she’d moved on in his absence, and the thought stung, and she couldn’t bring herself to reassure him that it was his. In her mind, there wasn’t any other option.

She isn’t sure how she expected him to reply, but he’d immediately lit up as soon as she’d said it. “Scully…” he’d began, wonder in his tone, and he’d pressed his hand against her stomach.

She’d laughed. “You’re not going to be able to feel it kick this early, Mulder.”

“Are you okay?” he’d asked immediately. “Is the baby okay?”

She pulled his hand up against her lips. “Everything’s fine, Mulder.” Everything was going to be fine, she’d told herself.

Now, she lies using him as a pillow in bed, his free arm wrapped around her and still pressed protectively over her stomach. It seems futile, she hasn’t even started showing yet, but she appreciates the gesture.

“It’s not going to be William,” she tells the ceiling.

“I know, Scully.”

“I just want you to understand,” she says. It was the same thing she’d told herself with William, when she couldn’t stop picturing a little girl who looked like her sister and called her Mommy in a fever dream.

“I understand, Scully.” She slides her hand up so that their fingers intertwine over top of their child. “It won’t be William, but it’ll still be ours.”

***

“You’re not going back,” he insists.

She rolls her eyes. “Mulder, I worked at the FBI for months after the first time I found out.”

“Yeah, and how did that go? You got a Jesus slug shoved up your back.”

Scully looks up in surprise. “I never told you that.”

“No, Doggett did. He felt like I ‘needed to know’. Which I did.”

“Mulder, first of all, on that case I went rouge. Which I won’t do, because I know you’ll freak out if you don’t watch me every second. Second of all, I wouldn’t take unnecessary risks.”

“Scully, it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing,” he says. “We get into trouble on these cases so often that we can’t really control it anymore. And I’ve held back on the ‘you should leave’ campaign because you’re one of the strongest people I know, and you can handle it. But honestly, this is one risk I don’t want to take. Not this time.”

Scully sighs. “You know the only reason I stayed on so long was to look for you, right?”

“I know.” He leans forward and kisses her hairline. “But you don’t need to worry. I’m not going anywhere.” She leans into him. “Besides,” he adds. “It’s not like anyone is going to be jumping onto the X Files unit while we’re gone. I bet Skinman would hold our spot, and maybe we could come back when the kid is a little older.”

Scully pulls back to look up at him incredulously. “ _We_?”

Mulder grins. “Sure. You didn’t think I would leave my wife in her delicate condition, would you?”

She slugs him in the shoulder. “Call me delicate again, buster.”

“Seriously, though, Scully. I don’t want to be at work without you, anyway. Or doing that thing where I give you a call when I need an autopsy done. Not again.”

Scully hugs him tightly, because somehow, she never thought he'd leave, even for her. “One last case?” she asks.

“Why not. I’ll even let you pick.”

She pulls back again to look at him. “Well, you’re being generous today.”

“What’re you talking about, Scully? This is my natural state!”

***

They tell Scully’s parents one Sunday after Mass, right after Maggie offers coffee and Scully declines. Maggie immediately goes in to hug Scully, while Captain Scully gives Mulder a look that makes him want to shrivel up on the spot. He subsequently offers his congratulations. When they tell Melissa, she punches Mulder on the arm jokingly and says, “Nice job.” When they tell Bill, he gives Mulder a similar look, and leaves him to wonder his standing with the Scully family, period.

They visit Teena Mulder to tell her, and she reacts in a somewhat happy way. It’s certainly happier than her reaction to when Mulder called to announce that they’d gotten married. Mulder calls his father to tell him, and his immediate reaction is, “I wasn’t aware you were married.” Mulder feels the need to comment that they weren’t, the first time around, but he avoids the urges.

That Christmas, they head to San Diego to visit Bill, almost out of necessity on Scully’s part, because she’s knows it’s irrational, like most of the past endeavours into a world that doesn’t exist are irrational, but she can’t stop picturing Emily, her daughter she’d never had in either worlds. They research Roberta and Marshall Sim, who apparently don’t exist. Scully insists on going to see the address, where the house is a different one, and a different family lives there.

***

_1998_

They decide to move, and Mulder manages to find the house they’d lived in before, somehow. They furnish it and set up a bedroom for the baby. Like before, Scully refuses to tell anyone the sex, although Mulder isn’t sure if she knows or if she’s just being coy.

They still have nightmares. Mulder has a series of Linda Bowman-filled dreams come January, and constantly finds himself reaching out to make sure they’re both still okay in the middle of the night. But somehow, it’s easy, just as easy as it was after Scully was cleared for cancer. Somehow, they’ve managed to find a place where they don’t worry as much.

***

His son is born on a Tuesday in May. He knows it's not his original birthday, but it works just as well.

For once, Mulder can say he was there for the entire thing, and he has never felt happier. It's him, and they both recognized it. Scully had gripped his arm, and whispered, “It’s William. I couldn't tell… before… but it's _William._ ”

Mulder had only been able to nod, speechless. He could feel it, too - the same connection that he'd felt in the other place. Somehow, William had carried over, too.

Now he sits next to Scully's bed with his son in his arms. (He'd only ever held him once before, so it feels monumental in itself.) Scully's asleep in bed, hair fanned out over the pillow, eyes screwed shut with exhaustion.

Mulder sees some slight movement near the door and tears his eyes away from William's sleeping face. The man near the door seems familiar, but Mulder can't put his finger on who it is. Whatever it is, though, the slight memory is not a happy one, and he tightens his grip on William.

The man moves away from the door. Mulder moves one hand to the gun he'd snuck in (just in case someone had come for Scully or William) but the man doesn't return.

***

She’d said before that this return from the other place was another chance. Now more than ever, it truly feels that way. Scully can easily say they take a lot more pleasure in parenting  the second time. Mulder never got a chance in the other place, and every chance of Scully's had been punctuated by longing for Mulder to be there with her. Now, she finds it easier to take pleasure in things like bringing William home from the hospital, because she didn't fear for her son’s life when he was born, or have to have him in an abandoned house away from Mulder, and she knows she won't give up William this time.

A few days later, she wakes up in the middle of the night to find Mulder's side of the bed empty. Panic seizes in her throat, and she darts down the hall only to stop abruptly when she sees Mulder on the couch with William asleep in his arms.

“Scully?” He sees her and seems to realize what she thought. “I'm so sorry. I thought…”

Scully blinks back tears, and she goes to sit on the couch, wrapping her arms tightly around them. It had always seemed like she'd had to trade Mulder for William and vice versa, even before someone tried to force her to make that choice. After Mulder was taken, she'd found out about William, and after he was born, Mulder had left. When she'd given William up, Mulder had returned shortly after. It had always seemed impossible, the idea that she could have them both at once.

Scully kisses her son's forehead, and turns her face against Mulder's shoulder. Her fingers curl into his jacket - because even though she knows he won’t leave, she feels as if she has to hold him here, just in case.

“I'm not going anywhere,” he promises them both.

***

_1999_

By the time William is a year old, Scully notices that things have a tendency to fall over whenever he gets mad. She passes it off as nothing, a coincidence, a mistake. There’s no way their son can have abilities. Aliens had nothing to do with his conception.

At this point, she’s back to being a doctor, back to working long hours and coming home. But things are different now, it seems, with William in the picture. Mulder seems more relaxed and at ease, even if she still catches him flipping through files he claims Skinner snuck out for him, still looking for traces of his sister.

But still, they are happy. It doesn’t get much more simple than that.

***

_2000_

“The world didn’t end,” he whispers into her hair.

She wakes, looking up at him sleepily, shifting William in her arms. “No,” she murmurs, kissing him. “It didn’t.”

***

Mulder isn’t sure of exactly when he gives into the whole dog debacle. He just knows that Scully cheerfully bundles William into the car, and promises to be back in a few hours, and he sits on the couch and researches cats.

By the time they get home, Mulder has resolutely decided not to get a cat. He can hear William giggling from outside, and when the door opens, a small animal pushes its way in immediately, running straight to the couch, and jumping onto him.

“Pip!” Scully scolds lazily as they enter the house. “Pip, get down!”

Mulder coughs a little as the dog licks his face. “Pip, huh? As in Charles Dickens? _Great Expectations_?”

“No!” Scully sounds greatly insulted. “The ship keeper from _Moby Dick_!”

“Oh, of course.” He tries to shove the dog off of his lap. William comes over to the couch, laughing, and pokes the dog in the leg. Mulder lifts him up to let him see the dog.

“William picked the name out himself,” Scully says proudly.

“He did, did he. Excellent choice, son!”

“Thanks,” William replies, patting the dog clumsily on the head.

“I listed all the characters from Moby Dick, and that was his favorite name,” she explains, setting down bags on what Mulder can only assume are dog supplies on the counters. William has managed to dodge reading _Moby Dick_ thus far, but Mulder suspects it won’t be long before the large book takes the place of William’s standard bedtime stories.

“Oh.” Mulder studies the dog, who has a white torso and a black and brown adorned face. “Hey, what kind is he?”

“He’s a Toy Fox Terrier.”

“Oh, wow!” Mulder replies loudly. “Pick the breed that is guaranteed to annoy me most, why don’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mulder. Besides, William picked him out.”

Mulder looks down at the kid curiously. He swears that William smirks, before running his hand down the dog’s back and muttering it’s name to it.

Mulder looks between his wife and son is defeat. He looks at the dog, who is licking William’s face.

“Hey, Scully,” he calls. “How about getting a cat?”

***

William has only ever met his grandmother on his father’s side a few times, so Mulder uses this as a convenient excuse to go and visit Teena right around the time of her suicide in the other place. She seems glad to have the time with William. She holds the boy on her lap and makes awkward small talk with Scully. Mulder asks if she’s feeling well, and she bluntly tells him yes. He snoops around the house for any evidence of her being sick, anyway, and watches her closely on the night of. Nothing happens.

He still remembers the encounter he had with Samantha’s spirit in the other place, and he remembers the date that it happened. He goes outside and stands on the lawn in the cold, under a sheet of elaborate stars dancing across the sky. He looks for the image of his sister running towards him. If he squints, he fools himself into thinking that he can see images from the past, himself and his sister the way they used to be, playing out in the yard.

He has no substantial proof as to whether Samantha is alive or not. But he goes inside that might with the feeling that she is still out there somewhere.

***

“Want to go to Oregon?” he jokes on the day of.

Scully glares at him furiously. “That’s not funny,” she mutters, shoving the cereal box back into the pantry.

“Scully,” he starts, not sure how to apologize.

“Would you go see if William is up? He’s got daycare in forty-five minutes and he hasn’t eaten anything yet.”

Mulder reaches out to touch her on the wrist, but she pulls away sharply, and he senses that he’s picked the wrong time to make a joke. Of course, that was always his best defense mechanism. Hers is isolation ( _I’m fine_ ), which is exactly what she did when it was her abduction. He feels guilty, but he also knows she doesn’t want to hear an apology, so he goes to get William.

That night, after William is in bed, and he is flipping through a book on the couch, he sees her watching him front the doorway. Before he can decide whether to motion her over, she comes over on her own, sliding under his arm. He hugs her and whispers, “I’m sorry.”

“Not now, Mulder,” she says fiercely. He gives up, and just holds her.

***

_2001_

He doesn’t remember. Which is fine.  She guesses she shouldn’t expect him to remember the date of his own death, but still. He remembers every trauma she’s ever experienced, and grows paranoid and clingy for every single one. But he doesn’t acknowledge the fact that this is the day she found him dead, so she doesn’t bother with it, either.

She hates him a little when he says, “I’m going to the store to pick up some milk. You want anything?” She could ask him to stay, admit that she is the paranoid one for once, and she doesn’t want to find him dead again, but she can’t make herself protest it, so she declines and that’s the end of it.

But it’s not the end, because Mulder takes several hours longer than it should take anyone to go to the store, and before she knows it, she’s bundling herself and William up, and walking down the road because he took their only car. William rambles on about something that happened in daycare the other day, and she tries to listen, tries not to remember his body crumpled on the ground. _This is not happening. This is not happening._

They find him on the side of the road talking to a mechanic. “Dad!” William shouts as they grow closer. “It’s really cold out here! What’s wrong with the car?” Scully hands him over, and tries to steady her breathing as she examines the vehicle.

“It broke down on the side of the road,” he explains. “Is everything okay?” He reaches down and takes her hand, and his fingers are too cold sliding between hers, and she shudders a little and tells him she just got worried.

The mechanic gives them a lift home, and William entertains himself by asking the man multiple car questions. Mulder leans over and apologizes, and she assures him that it’s all right, she just got too scared. When they get home, he puts a movie on for William, and corners her in the kitchen, pulling her into a hug. “I’m not going anywhere,” he repeats. “I promise. You’re stuck with me for a long time.”

She half-laughs, half-sobs against his shoulder, and tells him he’d better not ever go.

***

_2002_

William finds her crying on the couch the day of, and he climbs up beside her and asks her what’s wrong. She is not in habit of lying to her son, so she tells him the closest to the truth as she can get. “I had a… dream that you were gone, and I couldn’t see you anymore,” she tells him, swiping her fingers underneath her eyes.

William presses against her. “That’ll never happen, Mom.”

She smiles. “And what makes you say that?”

“I’ll never leave. That’s what.”

Scully laughs. “You’ll want to leave eventually, kiddo. Trust me.”

William looks up at her, and rolls his eyes in the way that Mulder says is exactly like her. “Nope. Never.”

She knows this isn’t true, but still, she hugs him tightly.

***

“Hey, Scully, we’re going to need to show up in court in a few weeks,” he says.

“Add that to the list of things that aren’t funny, Mulder,” she says without looking up from her laptop.

“What’s not funny?” William wants to know, entering the kitchen.

“Dad.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Mulder makes a face at his son, and waves the summons in Scully’s face. “I’m serious, Scully. Remember that ‘little accident’ I had a week back?”

“When you ran into that guy’s car?” William inquires.

Scully looks irritated at the mention. “Mulder, don’t tell me you’re being sued!”

“Okay, I won’t tell you. But don’t blame me when I leave the house all day for several days in a suit, and you notice our bank accounts running out.”

She rolls her eyes. “I still can’t believe you.”

“It wasn’t even a bad accident! Nobody was hurt! I just crashed into someone’s car when _it was empty_.”

“Too bad ours wasn’t.”

They both look at William, who responds with, “I think it was fun. It was like a car chase, and then I got to hear Dad cuss a bunch.”

Scully glares at Mulder.

Mulder sighs. “Should I get Skinman to represent me?”

“Why do you want Skinman to represent you?” William asks.

“Mr. Skinner,” Scully immediately corrects.

“Because _Mr._ Skinner is a brilliant lawyer, and really not living up to his full potential as Assistant Director of the FBI,” Mulder explains.

Scully seems to be holding back a smile. “This is ridiculous, Mulder. You really deserve to get sued,” she says in an attempt to maintain his cool exterior.

“There’s a lot of things I deserved that Skinner has gotten me out of, Scully. For example, when he kept us from getting reprimanded for our marriage. Skinner has been a throughline for us over the years, and I depend heavily on him.” Mulder clutches his chest dramatically, making William burst into giggles. “He’s our savior, Scully! Should we be so bold as to discredit such a brave soul?”

“Want me to call him for you, Dad?” William asks.

Mulder halts mid-monologue. “Well…”

“Be right back!” He takes off down the hall, socks skidding against the hardwood floor.

Mulder gives Scully an apologetic look. “He won’t be able to figure out the number.”

She rolls her eyes at him again. “Whatever happens, just make sure you don’t get the death penalty again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And none of that going on the run stuff. I like my hair the way it is, thank you very much.”

“Dad! Skinner’s on the phone!” William shouts from down the hall.

“Shit!” Mulder hisses frantically.  “How’d he figure out the number?”

“Just remember, because of you, our son now knows that word, and our old boss’s number, so how about you go deal with this, and I’ll research some actual lawyers, huh?”

***

_2003_

When William is in kindergarten, he tells them one day about a test he had to take. “They took me off in a room,” he says. “A man was in there, and he had me close my eyes and concentrate on things in the room.”

Mulder looks up from the forms he is filling out. Scully drops the plastic cup she'd been holding. They exchange a brief glance and immediately shift their attention to their son.

“Was… was it just you who had to take the test?” Scully asks.

William shrugs. “Everybody had to take it. But I asked Henry, and he said they made him listen to stuff to see if he could hear it. They made him wear big headphones.”

Scully's fingers are numb as she picks up the cup. She remembers a mobile spinning slowly in the other place, moving of its own accord.

“How did you do?” Mulder asks.

William grins. “The man told me I did very good.”

***

Mulder’s noticed it. He can still vividly remember the first time he took William to try baseball, and after a few tries, he had hit every one. which hadn’t been too unusual - except when he’d noticed the balls curving strangely. He’d dismissed it as the fact that it was windy that day. But it hadn’t been windy every day they’d played.

He goes down to the school and demands to know who was giving the tests. “They’re government organized tests,” the principal explains. “Perfectly ordinary.”

“And what if I’m concerned for my son’s safety?”

“They’re _hearing tests_ ,” the woman says, exasperated. “Not a big deal. Every child took them!”

“My son told us he took a different test!”

“That’s ridiculous, Mr. Mulder! These are government issued tests!”

Mulder doesn't bother to try and outline the untrustworthiness of the government for the principal. Something tells him it wouldn’t go over well.

***

_2004_

“Do you ever get scared?” William asks her as they walk Pip along the side of the road. She holds his small hand in hers, and wonders if things will ever be some form of normal for them.

“Of course I do,” she says.

“About what?”

Scully doesn't want to have to answer this question because it brings back half-baked nightmares from a place that doesn’t exist. “I get scared that something will happen to you or Dad,” she says. “That’s the worse.”

“I get scared about that, too,” he says, leaning his head against her shoulder. “I get scared something will happen to you and Dad, and I get scared someone will take me away from here.”

Scully tightens her grip on his hand. “That will never happen,” she says firmly. “Never.”

He looks up at her. “Never?”

“Of course not,” Scully lies. (She knows that they would do everything in their power to prevent anything from happening to William, but she also knows that a lot of times, things happen that you can’t prevent.) “Let’s not think about that anymore, okay?”

“Okay,” he says. He bends over and scoops up a stick to throw for Pip to fetch.

***

_2005_

William’s school takes a camping trip in the late spring. Scully signs up to chaperone, partly out of paranoia, partly so that she won’t have to be the sole parent in charge of his class’s end-of-the-year party. She is passing out snacks to sticky-fingered children when a scream erupts from deep in the woods. She immediately begins counting heads out of duty, but the single child she is searching for is no there.  She shouts his name frantically and takes off at a run through the trees.

He’s in a clearing, flat on his back, unconscious. She goes down on her knees beside him, and checks his pulse. It’s still there and beating steadily. She brushes her fingers across his forehead, and whispers his name. “Will?”

He opens his eyes and searches the area frantically. “Mom?” he whispers.

Scully breathes a sigh of relief. “It’s okay,” she tells him. “Are you hurt? Did you hit your head?”

William shakes his head and sits up, hair flopping in his eyes as he searches the clearing again. “Oh, no,” he whispers worriedly.

“Kaylee?” calls another mother from behind them. She rushes into the clearing, and sees them on the ground. “Have you seen Kaylee?” she asks desperately.

William looks down at his shoes. “She’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“The light took her.”

Scully looks down at her son with amazement and fear both clouding her vision. She grabs onto his wrist and tightens her grip. “William?” she asks, voice tremoring.

“I’m really sorry,” he mutters, looking at the ground. “The light took her.”

***

Mulder goes to the police station without much context besides the phone call he received from Scully, fading in and out of reception. She’d explained that a girl from William’s class had been abducted on the mountain and they wanted to question everyone. She’d said something about William being there for the entire thing.

There aren’t many people there besides the apparent mother of the abducted girl, who is sitting on the edge of a chair, looking concerned. Scully is standing in a corner, looking tired. Mulder approaches her immediately. “Are you okay?”

She nods silently.

“And William?”

“He has a knot on his head, but it’s superficial. He’ll be fine.”

Mulder hugs her quickly. “What happened? Where is he?”

At that moment, an officer comes into the main room and approaches them. “Miss Scully, your son is telling us the same story,” he says, irritation tingeing his voice. “And it’s just not making any sense.”

“ _Dr._ Scully,” Mulder unconsciously corrects, not liking the tone in the man’s voice.

He turns to face Mulder. “And you are?”

“William’s father, Fox Mulder. Now, do you mind explaining what the problem is?”

“Mr. Mulder, your son has been telling us that Kaylee Whitfield was beamed up by a light in the sky.”

 _Oh, shit._ Mulder looks over at Scully, who looks fearful and weary, but not very surprised.

“And you don’t believe him?” he asks, his voice hardening. This entire situation reminds him of his entire life, not believed, discredited, passed off as crazy.

“Why would we? The entire thing is ridiculous.”

“What reason would he have to lie?” Scully jumps in, just as a woman exits from the back room and comes to stand by the man.

“Miss Scully, your son may not be lying. He have hallucinated. Or he may be traumatized, and making up stories to cover up what really happened,” she says in a clinical voice that Mulder hates. He can’t stop picturing his son similar to the broken shell he’d been after Samantha, alone and scared and everyone accusing him of being a liar.

“Let me talk to him,” he says.

The man looks over at him. “Mr. Mulder…”

“Look, I’m an FBI agent,” Mulder snaps, pulling his old badge that he had tucked into his pocket before leaving the house out and handing it over. (He half expects Scully to jump in with “ _former_ FBI agent”, but she doesn’t.) “I’m aware of how these things work. Just let me talk to my son. He may be more comfortable telling me than telling strangers.”

The two officers exchange a look. For a moment, Mulder isn’t sure it’s gonna work, but they eventually give in.

William’s in a back office, sitting in a chair, thin police blanket draped over his shoulders, Band-Aid on his forehead. When he spots Mulder, he gets up and runs to him. Mulder grabs him into a hug, and holds on tightly,as if whatever it was that took that young girl is going to show up and snatch his son away again. _I almost lost you again,_ he thinks dimly.

“Hey, Dad,” William mutters.

Mulder lowers him back into the chair, and kneels beside him. “Hey, Will. How’re you feeling?”

“Okay, I guess,” he mutters. His eyes are wide, and reflect a familiar sense of guilt in them. Mulder’s seen this look before, and he’d hoped never to see it on his son.

“Are you upset about what happened?” he asks gently.

William nods.

“Were you friends with Kaylee?”

“Not really.”

“Do you wanna tell me about it?”

He nods again, clutching the insubstantial blanket in his fist.

“Okay,” Mulder says, feeling unusual, wrong, like he is interrogating a suspect instead of talking to his son. Since that is very much his purpose in this room. “Whenever you’re ready, buddy.”

William takes in a raspy breath. “Well, we were all playing hide and seek out in the woods. I was headed out there to hide, but Kaylee was already out there. She told me to go away, this was her spot. I was gonna leave, but then I heard it.”

“Heard what?”

“The aliens, Dad.”

_Oh my god._

“I heard them coming,” he says. “And then I saw the light. It shined right down on us. And I knew they wanted me, I knew they wanted to take me.”

Mulder reaches up and pulls William into a hug again. His hands are shaking.

William keeps on going. “I didn’t want to go, though. So I didn’t. I didn’t let them take me.”

Mulder blinks back tears. _What have I done?_

“I held back as hard as I could, so they wouldn’t take me.” William is crying too, now. “So they took Kaylee instead of me. The light lifted her right up into the air, and she screamed for help, but I didn’t help her! And then I fell over, and Mom was waking me up, and she was gone. She was just gone, Dad.”

Mulder hugs his son tighter, rocks him back and forth in a comforting manner. Trying to calm them both. He presses a kiss against William’s temple, and stands to leave the room.

“My son has given his statement,” he tells the officers outside of the room. “And you’re right, he’s traumatized. So we’re leaving now.”

The man tries to stop him. “Sir, you can’t…”

“We’re leaving now,” Mulder tells him firmly.

***

They speak in hushed voices as William dozes fitfully in the backseat. “What’re we going to do, Scully?” Mulder says in a hushed, terrified tone. “He said they came for _him_.”

Scully looks small in the car seat, hands clasped in her lap. “I don’t doubt it, Mulder,” she says softly. “I guess we should just be glad that he somehow knew how to defend himself.”

Mulder checks the rearview mirror one more time, as if William had evaporated away in the time since he last checked. He is still there, hair unbrushed and messy, knit blanket draped around him. “I thought this was all over, Scully,” he says. “When we decided to stop, after the sniper. I haven’t looked since then, Scully. I thought they’d leave us alone. I thought you both would be safe.”

“Mulder, you can’t blame yourself for this.” She splays her fingers out against the skin of his arm.

“Why can’t I? They took Samantha for a reason, they took you for a reason, and they tried to take William for a reason. What do all those things have in common?”

She grips his arm. “Mulder….”

He looks back at his son one more time. He remembers when William had whispered _so they took Kaylee instead of me. The light lifted her right up into the air, and she screamed for help, but I didn’t help her_ , and he’s seen this before, knows how this ends.

***

Scully puts him to bed, strokes his forehead as if checking for a fever, and asks if he needs anything. William shakes his head, eyes half-closed.

She pushes his hair back, moves so that she’s sitting next to him on the bed, and hugs him. “Will, you know what happened tonight wasn’t your fault, right?”

“Yeah, it was, Mom. I didn’t let them take me, so they took her.”

Scully has had this same conversation before, with his father. She leans her head against his, and says, “But, William, you didn’t mean for them to take Kaylee, did you?”

He shakes his head.

“Did you get her to come out there so they would take her? Did you ask for them to take her instead of you?”

“No,” he replies huskily.

“Then it wasn’t your fault.” She pulls away, and turns to face him, raising his chin with her fingertips so that he looks her in the eye. “Do you understand me, William? It was not your fault.”

He nods again. He is tired and defeated.

“Do you want to sleep in here, or do you want to come stay with Dad and me?”

“You and Dad,” he says softly.

Scully is honestly relieved because she’s not sure she’s ready to let him out of her sight. She scoops him up, and carries him down the hall to their bedroom.

***

It’s a little while before William stops having nightmares. Mulder isn't surprised. After all, he’s been there himself all too often.

Kaylee Whitfield reappears at a hospital in a coma in September. She remembers nothing of her ordeal.

***

_2006_

“So, you and Mom used to work here, right?” William asks in the elevator.

Mulder makes a face at him. “William, this is the FBI building. You know we used to be FBI agents.”

“Yeah, I know,” William says, half-mock-disgusted. “I meant in the basement.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” he says. “People don’t tend to like it when you investigate monsters and mutants and aliens.”

“That sucks,” William replies, rapping his knuckles against the metal of the wall. “You and Mom lucked out in terms of cool jobs.”

“Yeah, well, cool jobs come at a price. And we’re counting on you to get this family out of the basement, kid.”

William sticks his tongue out as the elevator comes to a stop at the bottom floor. As they exit, Mulder can’t help but feel a momentous sense of deja vu. It’s not much, but he is certainly proud of the years that he and Scully spent on the X Files, FBI’s most unwanted or not.

He shows William the small basement office, and he is indignant about the size. “Seriously? They stuck you and Mom and the closet? That is so unfair.” He runs his fingers along the two nameplates on the door. _Agent Fox Mulder. Agent Dana Scully_. “You should take the nameplates to get back at them.”

“Maybe I should,” Mulder replies. He can’t believe they left them here all these years. He also can’t believe it too him 23 years in Hell to get Scully a nameplate.

“Seriously. You could put them on your bedroom door, like that sign Mom made me for my bedroom.”

Mulder laughs. “I would, but I seem to have forgotten my screwdriver. Also, we’re in a building full of federal agents, and Skinner would kick my ass if he has to bail me out again.”

“But he bailed you out when you were being sued.”

“That’s because Skinman has some buddies in high places. And I think he’s secretly in love with me. That’s why your mom doesn’t like him.”

“Sure, Dad. By the way, I won’t tell Mom that you said ‘ass’.”

_Damn it._

William steps inside the office, which is untouched. Surprising, since it’d been burned, and plundered, on two different occasions. “I like that poster,” William says, jabbing a finger at the poster they’d decided to leave in the office in case they ever returned. “Can we steal that?”

“Why are you so fixated on stealing something?”

“I want to see if we can get away with it.”

“You know that poster is mine, right? If you want it, we can take it.”

“Awesome.” William tries to work his fingernail under a thumbtack on the left corner. “So, why did you want to come here, Dad?”

“There’s something I wanted to get,” he answers without much explanation.

“Ah, so stealing was in the plan from the beginning?”

“Just get the poster,” he tells William with a smirk. Mulder rounds the old desk, and kneels to open a drawer.

“Does Mom know about this?” William calls from across the room.

“Yes, she does, actually.” He rummages through years of assorted things. He finds an old pair of glasses, and tucks them in his pocket. He shoves aside old newspaper clippings to find what he’s looking for at the bottom: his sister’s file.

There had come a point where he had moved it into his desk. He doesn’t really even remember why. Now, he just knows he doesn’t want it to be here, in the hands of the government. Trust no one, or whatever it was that Deep Throat, who may or may not exist, fed Scully on a bridge in the other place.

Mulder stands to see his son standing next to a cabinet, flipping through a file. He looks up sheepishly. “Sorry, Dad, I…”

“It’s fine,” he says. “Just… put it back the way you found it.”

William shoves it in the open drawer, and pushes it closed. Mulder studies the label as they exit the office. T-Z. Telepathy? Telekinesis? He shoves his lifted file under his jacket.

Outside of the building, Mulder lingers for a moment. He has a lot of memories associated with this place. not all of them good, not all of them real. But still, he misses being here.

“Dad?” William grabs his arm, eyes wide. “Can we go?”

Mulder sees a man looking at them. He thinks he remembers him from the day William was born.

“Yeah, let’s go,” he says.

***

_2007_

“Why’d Dad give you a sucky movie for your birthday?” William asks from the couch.

“Inside joke.” Scully smacks the yard sale VCR with her heel of her hand, and grumbles something about outdated technology.

“Yeah, but why _Superstars of the Superbowls_?”

“Because your dad thinks it’s funny.”

“And you don’t?”

She shrugs, and grins. “It’s cute.”

William wrinkles his nose, and shudders. “Ew.”

“You can ew all you want, kid, but there’s no getting out of this one. This is a rite of passage.” She shoves the tape into the player, and goes to join her son on the couch.

“Hey, but, Mom, I’d almost rather sit through Moby Dick than this, and that's really saying something.”

“Hey, watch it,” Scully says sternly. “Even your dad knows better than to insult that book in this household.”

William smirks up at her. “What has it ever done for me? Besides give our dog a sucky name.”

Pip, who is napping on the rug lifts his head and lets out a short yip of indignation.

“You are using the word ‘sucky’ entirely too much. And may I remind you that I listed out all the names from _Moby Dick_ , and you picked Pip all by yourself.”

“Yeah, but I was also two.”

She tousles his hair quickly. “Settle in. I’ll say it again: there’s no getting out of this one.”

William groans and slouches back in his seat as Scully flicks the TV on and lets the movie play. About halfway through, he speaks up again. “Mom?”

“Yes?”

“You really love Dad, don’t you?”

She grins in spite of herself. “Yeah, I do. Why do you ask?”

“Because you’re watching _Superstars of the Superbowls_.”

She laughs, and pokes him in the side. “Will, if you really love Dad, then you’d shut up and watch his sucky movie.”

“So you admit it’s sucky?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now, shut up and watch the movie.”

They sit in silence for a few more minutes before William speaks up again. “Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s been a while since Dad watched Moby Dick, isn’t it?”

“It has been.”

“So… I think we should watch tonight.” He grins with the mischievous grin of his father.

Scully smirks. “Not a bad idea. It is still my birthday, after all.”

***

_2008_

The car pulls up to the massive gate out of seemingly nowhere, and stops with a purpose. William doesn't recognize the car or it's drivers, but he is able to deduct that they aren't friendly when two men step out and point guns at him. The baseball he was holding instantly drops and rolls through the red dust at his feet.

"Are you William Scully?" one of them asks in a faux cheerful voice.

William decides to go for coy for some unknown reason. "No," he replies. "I'm William Mulder."

The man cocks his gun to ready it for fire. William shuts up, and considers screaming for help. He decides not to, sensing it will be a lot worse for his parents if they come then for him if he stays.

"You've come to take me, haven't you," he says knowingly.

The man who didn't ask him his name smirks. "Smart kid."

"You're going to kill my parents, aren't you." William knows his parents are very capable of fighting back, but he also knows that these men are smart, and they will threaten him if they need to, to force his parents to surrender.

They don't answer. Cigarette smoke obscures the face of the driver.

"You can't," he says, his voice a plea. This is his childhood nightmares come to life, the things his parents promised to save him from. That isn’t an option now. _Protect Mom and Dad. How can I do that?_

"We can and we will," the first man replies.

_How can I... how can I..._

"You won't," he says with force. The second man steps back and lowers his gun to his side. The first man stays, but visibly falters. He is surprised. He didn’t expect it to work.  
"You're not gonna hurt my parents," he says, hands balling into fists at his sides. "Ever. Or me, or anyone from my family. You're gonna go away, and leave us all alone."

The first man steps back to stand beside the second, who has a glazed look in his eyes. The first still looks determined, though, and he gives William a look of utter loathing.  
"You know what I can do. You know you have no choice." William takes a step forward. The first man’s eyes start to glaze over. “I want you to go away,” he says. “ _Now_.”

The men step inside the car, slamming the doors behind him. The car hesitates, then pulls away, a small stream of cigarette smoke trailing out of the crack in the window.

William relaxes, gasping from the effort and shock of what he has done. He can feel his heart thudding throughout his body.

Behind him, a door opens and Scully pokes her head out. “William?” she calls. “You’ve been outside for twenty minutes, and you need to finish your homework!”

William looks over his shoulder, shouting, “Coming, Mom!”

Halfway up the driveway, he decides not to tell his parents about what just happened. There really isn’t any need to, anyway. They won’t be coming back.

***

She wakes him by brushing her fingers against his cheek, the way he had in a car years before. “Hey,” she says, her voice soft and mocking. “I think you drooled on me.”

Mulder grunts noncommittally and lifts his head from her shoulder. “Want to go upstairs?” he asks, his voice husky.

Scully pokes William, sprawled asleep across their laps. “Can't.”

Mulder sighs and shifts his weight. “At least we kept the comfortable couch.”

“I never liked this couch.”

“Oh, sure. Scully, a lot has happened upon this couch.”

“Yeah, I know. But my couch was better.”

Mulder bumps his shoulder against hers. “Liar.”

The TV plays in the background, casting a half-light over the three of them. William lets out a low snore and Scully combs through his hair absently with her fingers. Mulder wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“You know,” he says suddenly and quietly. “I don't think that… the other place was Hell after all.”

Scully looks over at him incredulously. “What do you mean?”

“Well, both times I was there, it was terrible, and wonderful, and wonderfully terrible, but look what came out of it. The first time, I fell in love with you. The second time, it got me ready to be William’s father. In some strange way, isn't that a blessing?”

William shifts in his sleep. Scully looks at her son, and shifts her gaze to Mulder. “I guess it could be,” she says.

Mulder shifts his knee, also shifting the sleeping William. “You ever think about having another?”

Scully looks up at him in surprise. “Don’t you think we’re a little old for that?”

“Not necessarily, Scully. Never give up on a miracle.”

“Shut up.” She rests her head against his shoulder and closes her eyes.

Mulder grins, reaches with his free hand and grabs her left hand. The gold bands clang together as their fingers intertwine.

***

The phone rings. William shouts from somewhere in the house, “I'll get it!”, and charges down the hall to the receiver. He grabs it and answers in a rush, “Mulder-Scully residence, William Scully speaking.”

Mulder rolls his eyes affectionately.

“Okay, one second,” William says into the phone. “Dad, it’s for you!”

He gets up and goes to answer the phone. “Mulder,” he says in the clipped voice he used to answer his cell phone with in his days at the FBI.

“Fox Mulder?”

“Speaking.”

“I’m calling from Our Ladies of Sorrows Hospital in DC. Recently, a woman who has been here a few months came out of a coma. Her identity was unknown up until now, but she claims that her name is Samantha Mulder.”

The hand holding the phone goes numb, and he has to grip the table to keep from falling over.

“She says that you’re her brother, although she hasn't seen you in years. Do you know…”

“Yes. Yes, I know her.”

“Excellent. Would you be willing to come down to the hospital?”

“Of course,” he says, over eager, wary of the fact that this could be a trick, but he can’t not follow up on it, he can’t ignore it, and somehow, this all feels right, like everything’s aligned in the right way.

“All right. Thank you, sir.” The other end hangs up. Mulder stands there for a moment, still clutching the receiver. William is standing in the doorway, giving him a _what’s going on_ look.

“Hey, Scully?” he calls out.

“Yes, Mulder?”

“I found her.”

_end_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, i ended there. i like ambiguous endings. i originally was gonna end this universe with them on the couch, so you can tell i like ambiguity. (sorry!) i wanted to fix everything that i thought was wrong with the show, and i'm hoping i accomplished that. also it’s kinda poetic if mulder and scully finish where they started? (also i have no conscious idea of how to write samantha mulder, since there's like three different versions of their reunion.)  
> i can assure you that there are lots of fluffy moments and that m&s&w (because that's a thing!) were/are very happy.  
> disclaimer: not to disappoint scully but i have never read moby dick. therefore, i thank wikipedia for the origin of pip’s name, and the akc for information on toy fox terriers. (i picked that breed for the same reason scully did, as i was just looking for small dog breeds and i found that one. what a gem!) pip exists because, while i am not comfortable creating a msr kid (although i kind of assume they had another one?), i am perfectly comfortable giving them another dog. daggoo+queequeg 4ever.  
> where the 1st part was about mulder and scully individually, and the 2nd part was about mulder and scully together, the 3rd part was about mulder and scully with william, rounding out what i think are the three most important parts of the show. maybe it was a little unrealistic to give them william when he (technically) never existed before (? i've confused myself?), and maaaaybe it was a little unrealistic for william to save everything like that but whatever, i love william, i love this idea, and mulder and scully played the heroes for 20 something years in the other place. it's the kid's turn. i had the idea that they’d get william back before i even started adding more to this. i wanted to be adamant, though, that they weren’t trying to replace william, but that it really was william. (and hell, if duane barry, some version of deep throat, and krcyek can all exist for real, why can’t william?)  
> the reason i sent mulder back to the other place because i wanted to do a dad mulder exploration because dad mulder is my favorite thing ever. (see: founder's mutation. also the first fanfic i ever wrote was a weird little au iwtb from emily’s perspective and dad mulder was the main theme.) also i felt like scully was squared away with motherhood but mulder had some demons to confront. i just love mulder and scully as parents. hell, i love mulder and scully in almost any form. and i’m going to stop before i go into a monologue.  
> disclaimer: i don't think that people should be married before having kids. i just think msr should be married, and to me, it made sense when i did it. so that’s why.  
> the callout to skinner’s lawyer gig in ‘the truth’ is because i love lawyer skinner with an untempered passion, and agree with basically everything mulder says about skinner in that section.  
> i realized that car trouble seems to follow mulder this part. unintentional, altho if you want to interpret it as a defense of scully’s little feet and their ability to reach the pedals, fine by me.  
> this has been such a fun thing to write, and i thank everyone who encouraged me to continue, and i hope i didn't disappoint. i'm going to leave everything else up to everyone's imagination.  
> also i wrote a short thingy with five scenes set in this au: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6162526  
> (sorry for the infinite a/n)


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